Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee dies in Taiwan at 70
Lam Wing-kee, the Hong Kong bookseller who became a symbol of the shrinking space for dissent under Beijing, died on 2 July at a hospital in Taipei. He was 70 and had been treated for lung cancer that recurred and advanced to stage four.
Lam was one of five people associated with Causeway Bay Books — a shop known for gossipy titles about China’s leadership — who disappeared in late 2015 and resurfaced in mainland custody. He said he was seized after crossing into Shenzhen in October 2015, held for five months under constant surveillance, and pressured into a televised confession. Rather than return to the mainland as instructed, he went public with his account, a rare direct challenge to the detentions.
He left Hong Kong for Taiwan in 2019 as Beijing prepared an extradition bill that triggered mass protests, and reopened Causeway Bay Books in Taipei in 2020. His death removes one of the more prominent living witnesses to the 2015 case, which marked an early signal that Beijing was willing to reach beyond its borders to silence critics — a pattern Hong Kong’s later national security law formalized.