The metal door of Causeway Bay Bookstore is locked, just as it was month after month after the disappearances last year of five Hong Kong booksellers. The five men had tended the shop and published many of the gossip-filled volumes on Chinese politics that lined its shelves.

Four of the booksellers, who all served months in detention in mainland China, have returned to Hong Kong. A fifth, the publisher and a Swedish citizen, remains in Chinese custody more than a year after he was spirited away from his home in Thailand.

The dramatic disappearances of the five men garnered headlines around the world and led to fears in Hong Kong that the city’s considerable autonomy, guaranteed by the treaty that led to its return by Britain to Chinese rule in 1997, had been gravely compromised. Read more