My Take | Case of Hong Kong bookseller’s disappearance may well drag on

The “rogue agents” theory about the disappearance of five booksellers now seems increasingly plausible. The strongest indication is that even the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong is trying to distance itself from the incident.

Speaking on the sidelines of a law conference at the University of Hong Kong last week, the office’s new legal affairs chief Wang Zhenmin said officials were “very concerned”. He said unequivocally that if Lee Bo, the only bookseller to have disappeared from Hong Kong, was captured in the city by mainland officers, their action would be a clear breach of “one country, two systems”.

Lee’s four associates have disappeared from Shenzhen and Thailand since October. Wang is the first mainland official to comment on the case. He added a tad defensively that “the central government works in strict accordance with the Basic Law”.

A former member of the Basic Law Committee, Wang is considered to be a conservative hardliner. As a new appointee to his office, he would not want to stick his neck out. If someone of his political credentials declines to defend or justify what could well be a political kidnapping, that shows it was unlikely to have been officially sanctioned, whatever turns out to be the real facts of the case.

Another indication is that Hong Kong officials, from the chief executive down, increasingly speak out for Lee. No doubt they have been driven by their conscience and sense of responsibility, but also because they realise it’s okay to do so.

The most likely scenario is that rogue operators have cooked up a potato too hot to handle.