2015 disappearances at the first bookstore

In 2015, major figures associated with the first bookstore disappeared, with some later confirmed to have been abducted by the Chinese government.

• Lui Bo (呂波, born 1970), the manager and one of the three shareholders of Mighty Current, whose last known location was in the bookstore. On 14 October 2015, he logged on to the bookstore computer for the last time. Unconfirmed sources state that he was taken away from his wife's home in Shenzhen.^[11]
• Gui Minhai (桂民海, born 1966), a Swedish national and one of the three shareholders of Mighty Current,^[11] was taken away from his home in Pattaya, Thailand by an unknown man on 17 October 2015.^[12][13] Gui had written some 200 books during his ten years as author/publisher.^[14] He was last heard from on 6 November when he called his wife to tell her that he was safe but was unwilling to reveal his whereabouts.^[15] Gui's family contacted the Swedish embassy, and the Swedish police filed a report through Interpol.^[14] The Thai authorities have no record of him leaving the country.^[16]

According to Bei Ling, there were rumours that a book was the main reason of Gui's disappearance.^[17] Lee Bo thought so too.^[18] The publication is an e-book entitled Xi Jinping and his Mistresses.^[19] There are two versions, the first having 135 pages and the second having 155 pages. They are published at the end of January and the start of February 2016.^[20][21]

• Lam Wing-kee (林榮基, born 1955), the founder of Causeway Bay Books, went missing on 24 October 2015.^[22] He habitually spent long hours at the bookshop and occasionally slept there.^[23] According to Lam, he went across the border to Shenzhen, where he was abducted by mainland police, blindfolded and interrogated for months.^[24] His wife filed a missing persons report with the police on 5 November and his family received a telephone call from him several hours later;^[23] Lam returned to Hong Kong from the mainland eight months after he disappeared and immediately went to the police station to cancel his missing person's report, refusing all other comment.^[25] Three days later, on the day he was due to return to the mainland, he held a press briefing during which he claimed that he was detained by the mainland officials at the Hong Kong-China border control in Shenzhen on 24 October 2015.^[26] Without being told what offence he had committed, he was stripped of his rights of access to a lawyer and to inform family members of his detention and taken to Ningbo and held under 24-hour guard by the Central Task Force, which reports to central leadership.^[27][28][29] After March 2016, Lam was transferred to Shaoguan, where he worked in a library, but he was prevented from leaving the mainland.^[29][30] In June 2016, he was given permission to return to Hong Kong so he could collect a hard drive containing information of the bookstore's customers. However, he used the opportunity to flee mainland Chinese custody and publicly announced details of how he had been abducted.^[24] He also stated that his confession on mainland TV in February 2016 was scripted, and that Lee Bo's televised confession was similarly forced.^[26][29] In April 2019, Lam moved to Taiwan over the possibility at the time he could be extradited to mainland China, due to the proposal of a now-withdrawn extradition bill.^[24]
• Cheung Jiping (張志平, born 1983), a manager of Mighty Current, was taken away from his wife's home in Fenggang, Dongguan by at least a dozen men in plainclothes.^[11]
• Lee Bo (aka Paul Lee, 李波, born 1950),^[31] a British citizen and the husband of Sophie Choi, who is in turn one of the three shareholders of Mighty Current.^[11] Lee regularly helped out in the bookstore. Lee worked at Joint Publishing until he started at the bookstore.^[32] Since the disappearances of four of his colleagues, he had been doing anonymous interviews with BBC and various media. Lee was last seen on 30 December 2015, while delivering books in Chai Wan to a certain unknown client.^[33] Choi, who had been expecting Lee home for dinner at around 7.15 pm on 30 December, raised the alarm when he failed to return home.^[34][35][36] After he, the first bookstore's last staff member, disappeared, the first version of the bookstore shut down.

Destruction of first bookstore's stocks

Up until the disappearances, the first bookstore maintained a stock of books for sale – in excess of 100,000 units – in two warehouses. One of the warehouses, containing some 45,000 books, was emptied according to the instructions of shareholder Sophie Choi, and one helper at the bookshop said that Choi ordered the stock destroyed in the hope that the return of Lee Bo, her husband, would be expedited.^[39]