Tiananmen Book Seller's Fight Shows China's Sway Over Hong Kong

(Bloomberg) -- To see just how much China’s grip is strengthening over Hong Kong, try publishing a book about the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Bao Pu, one of the financial hub’s last independent publishers, has been turned down by printers, shunned by landlords and can’t get his books in most of the city’s stores. He only managed to print his latest book on Tiananmen -- “The Last Secret: The Final Documents from the June Fourth Crackdown” –- by operating in stealth.

“There’s no longer a viable solution for independent publishing in Hong Kong,” Bao, 53, said in an interview in Hong Kong ahead of the book’s release in June. “I hope at least one independent book distributor could end up surviving so Hong Kong’s independent publishing industry can continue in the future.”

Although Hong Kong operates under an autonomous legal and political system, the plight of the city’s book industry shows the lengths to which Chinese President Xi Jinping has gone to censor any material that challenges the Communist Party’s grip on power. And 30 years later, few topics are as sensitive as the Tiananmen bloodshed in which soldiers killed hundreds –- and possibly thousands -- of people in the center of Beijing.

For Bao, uncovering what happened at Tiananmen is personal: His father Bao Tong -- a top aide to Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party chief ousted in the wake of the protests -- ended up jailed for his role in aiding political reform. The younger Bao, who took part in the demonstrations, left China to study at Princeton University and later became a consultant.

“You should always believe that if you go to the street to demonstrate, the party will shoot you,” Bao said. “That’s the legacy of the Tiananmen crackdown.”

In 2001, he headed to Hong Kong and started his book business. Back then the city had a vibrant publishing scene fueled by visitors from the mainland who wanted to read material they couldn’t get at home. While some of it was unverifiable gossip, it also included plenty of serious work about key Communist Party figures.

Bao published books that focused on sensitive topics, including memoirs from Zhao and the exiled son of late North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. He even published a book based on the writings of a controversial British scholar who claimed to have a relationship with the empress dowager Cixi, the de facto ruler of China for almost half a century until her death in 1908.

The industry started to change for the worse in 2010, when Chinese authorities began to crackdown on publication of forbidden material, from Tiananmen to the Falun Gong religious sect to Tibetan independence. What started as confiscating banned books at border checkpoints turned more sinister with the alleged illegal kidnappings of Hong Kong booksellers in 2015.

Bao expects that it’s just a matter of time before it becomes impossible to publish a sensitive book in the city. Already his business has become unprofitable as companies refuse to print or distribute his books, often with no explanation. He declined to name his current printer out of fear they would be targeted.

“Printers are taking a real risk -- they have to take that into account,” said Bao. “Our plan B was actually printing in the United States.”

“The Last Secret” is based on what Bao says are previously undisclosed Communist Party documents that offer a rare fly-on-the-wall account behind the decision-making process that led to the Tiananmen crackdown. He said they contain a series of speeches and essays from the country’s top leaders, including Deng Xiaoping, that were distributed internally two weeks afterward.

Bao declined to disclose how he obtained the documents or show a copy of the book ahead of publication. He said they show how an internal power struggle over how to run the economy -- a state-driven model versus market reforms -- eventually spilled into the public domain. He called it a misconception that Deng sacrificed the lives of a few hundred people in exchange for the greater good of the economy.

“People were under the impression that the Communist Party was on the verge of collapse,” Bao said. “They were never in any danger of losing power, the final bloodshed and large scale tragedy was caused by unfortunate timing and missteps from those in leadership.”

The book draws parallels to China under Xi -- at both points, absolute loyalty to one man underpinning the Communist Party’s power structure, he said. The cost of ensuring stability is getting higher, he said, as seen by how China spends more on internal security versus external defense.

Bao said the power structure also hurts creativity, damages the lives of displaced workers, has spawned the spectacle of Muslim minorities in reeducation camps and led to the persecution of intellectuals for speaking their minds.

“Xi Jinping requires the same as Deng and Mao: He requires absolute loyalty, no questions asked,” Bao said, referring to former party patriarch Mao Zedong. “But Xi is facing a different world. The next person is going to cost even more.”

The only thing that still gives Bao hope: young people from China are still buying his books. He wants an independent publishing house to survive in Hong Kong, and for libraries to carry books that document real history.

“The very meaning of freedom is that you have to be able to fill the edges,” he said. “What is the limit of that freedom? I’m not ready to give up that.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Hong Kong at dtenkate@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Lulu Yilun Chen, Daniel Ten Kate

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