Hong Kong book stores pull titles banned in mainland China from shelves as mystery over missing bookseller deepens
Signs of jitters among local publishers as one major retail chain pulls banned books from shelves
Reading material banned on the mainland has been pulled from the shelves of at least one Hong Kong bookstore as the mystery over the disappearance of bookseller Lee Bo deepens.
English-language-focused Page One, which has a total of eight outlets in the city – six of them at Hong Kong International Airport – is understood to have begun withdrawing sensitive material from sale in late November, around the time the first of five men linked to Causeway Bay Books went missing.
The pulling of the books marks a small but potentially significant moment for what has become the lucrative business of selling sensational, page-turning books on China banned by Beijing.
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When a South China Morning Post reporter posing as a customer approached Page One’s Tsim Sha Tsui store and asked for a book called The Secret Deals Between Xi Jinping and Bo Xilai, the salesman said the retailer had stopped selling banned books more than a month ago.
“We were told to take all politically sensitive books off the shelves in late November. The manager did not tell us the reason, but said Page One would no longer sell banned books ever again.”