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| Lam Wing-Kee (via) | |
Plans by Lam Wing-kee--one of the five Hong Kong booksellers kidnapped in 2015 for selling titles critical of the Chinese government--to open a bookstore in Taiwan have been scrapped after Chinese authorities pressured an investor, the South China Morning Post reported.
The decision to abandon the project came in June, during a meeting in Taiwan between Lam, a Taiwanese partner and an investor from Hong Kong, who has factories and other business ventures in mainland China. According to the South China Morning Post, the wife of the Hong Kong investor, who runs their Chinese factories, began receiving threats from the authorities shortly after the announcement of the bookstore plans.
The Taiwanese partner told SCMP that while he had not received any direct threats himself, he was encouraged by his own wife to drop out of the venture and advised by officials in Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council to not go the mainland. And in early May, a state-owned newspaper based in Hong Kong called Ta Kung Pao published personal details about the bookstore backers.
The same partner noted that in addition to the threats, there were also disagreements among the partners about how best to run the bookstore. Lam told the SCMP that he plans to try again to open a store in Taiwan.
He said: "If we want to fight against the infiltration of ideologies promoted by the Chinese government, shouldn't we first learn about the roots of these ideologies? It will be a process of enlightenment and we can contribute to that [by running a bookstore]."