In a bookstore near one of Taipei’s leading universities, Zeng Da-fu and his wife work quietly into the evening. Zeng has run this store for decades, tucked in a laneway behind a wall of crumbling posters. They sell books on history and politics and Chinese translations of foreign texts, mainly to students but also once to Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, Zeng notes proudly. His work is crucial to the defence of Taiwan’s democracy, he says. This week that battle came close to home.
Zeng, 75, is also a big investor in Gusa Publishing, a company whose editor-in-chief, Li Yanhe, was this week revealed to be detained in China on national security accusations.
Li, also known by his pen-name Fucha, disappeared shortly after arriving in Shanghai to visit family last month. His detention by authorities was only revealed this week when a Taiwan-based Chinese poet and editor, Bei Ling, posted the news on social media, sending shock waves through Taiwan.
For days, Taiwan’s government would say only that he was safe and that his family had asked for privacy. Then on Thursday, Beijing confirmed that Li was detained, under investigation for “conducting activities endangering national security”.
Zeng and his wife know Li well.
“Fucha is good and kind and wants to publish good books, but it’s hard in China because of censorship,” he says.
The case has sent chills through the island’s community of booksellers and writers, echoing previous cases of Chinese authorities targeting writers and disseminators of critical or politically sensitive literature – Li was not even the only case this week. It also comes at a time of deepening authoritarianism in China, and escalating hostilities between Beijing and Taiwan.
Often, there is little to no detail of what those accused of endangering national security are supposed to have done. For Li, many assumed it relates to Gusa’s publishing of titles critical of the Chinese Communist party or discussing topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, human rights abuses of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and party corruption.
The Taiwan-based east Asia director for Reporters Without Borders, Cédric Alviani, joined global calls for his release, saying Li was “one of the last Chinese publishers to still dare release investigative books critical to the regime”.
Parallels have been drawn with the five Hong Kong booksellers who were “disappeared” from various global locations in 2015. One, Gui Minhai, remains in a Chinese jail serving a 10-year sentence on espionage charges. Another, Lam Wing-kee, reopened Causeway Bay Books in Taipei after he skipped bail and fled Hong Kong.
Lam told the Guardian Li’s case served as a warning to the industry that “publishing these books is a risk”.
Li was born in China and worked for the Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing House, but in 2009 he moved to Taiwan, where he married, started a family, and launched Gusa Publishing. He had applied for citizenship in the Republic of China (Taiwan’s formal name), a process that required the Chinese national to return home and cancel his household registration.
“Taiwan’s national security bureau says every Taiwanese citizen has to carefully know this situation,” says Bei Ling. “It’s more risky. But they don’t say: don’t go into China.”
Bei says he learned of Li’s arrest from contacts he still has in China. He posted the information on Facebook. While Li’s family appear to have sought to keep the case quiet, perhaps in the hopes it would help secure his release, Bei felt it was urgent to get as much international attention as possible.
In 2000, Bei was arrested in China over his work publishing works by Chinese dissidents and exiles. He knew nothing of the campaign for his release during those 15 days, which included press articles in the New York Times and editorials by Susan Sontag.
His brother was arrested for trying to get him freed, a fact Bei learned when they were both released at the same time. Bei was allowed to leave China for the US, becoming a citizen and later moving to Taiwan.
Speaking from his home in the mountains outside Taipei, he wonders what can be done now for Li. He says times were different when he was detained, especially US-China relations under Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin. Now, an outcome like his feels impossible.
He laments that Li was in detention at the same time the former Taiwanese president, Ma Ying-jeou visited the city, and China’s leaders welcomed the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and a large business delegation.
Ma and his party have much warmer ties with Beijing than the current Taiwan administration, and Macron was warmly received by Xi Jinping. Had they known of Li’s detention, this could have been a unique opportunity to lobby behind the scenes for his release, Bei says.
Taiwan’s government has said they are treating Li as a full citizen, but this will have no impact on Chinese authorities, who do not recognise the ROC as a country.
Beijing claims Taiwan as a Chinese province and is building its military capability to annex it if it won’t surrender. Taiwan functions as an independent nation, with a democracy hard-won after decades of martial law that only ended in the 1980s. Zang says his and Li’s work in bringing educational materials to young Taiwanese people is crucial to ensuring it continues.
“Our generation can bear the risk to ensure the next generation is safe,” he says. “If I am afraid of the CCP I will live like the walking dead because I will lose the preciousness of life: having truth, justice and love.”
