New Bloom (Taipei) — Lam Wing-Kee, the only one of the Hong Kong Causeway Bay booksellers to remain free, applied for permanent residency in Taiwan last month on the basis of being a professional in arts and culture. While there is a good chance that his application will be accepted, some other Hongkongers are finding greater difficulty.

The Causeway Bay booksellers were a group of five employees of Causeway Bay Books in Hong Kong, a bookstore that published tabloid-style books critical of the Chinese government. The five disappeared between October and December 2015, later reemerging in China only to publicly confess to their “crimes,” stating that they had voluntarily handed themselves in to the mainland authorities.

It is thought that the Causeway Bay booksellers were kidnapped by the Chinese government as a show of force. Their confessions are thought to have been forced, along the familiar lines in which the Chinese government coerces political dissidents into admitting crimes which they have not committed.

Gui Minhai, one of the booksellers, disappeared while in Thailand, most likely with the connivance of the Thai authorities.

Lee Bo, another of the booksellers, disappeared while in Hong Kong. This raised concerns at the time about the possibility that Chinese security forces were spiriting individuals away from Hong Kong directly into China, circumventing Hong Kong legal system altogether. (It is important to note that this action took place prior to the 2019 protests which were sparked by popular concerns over a bill that officially allowed for extraditions of Hongkongers to China.)

As for Lam, he was allowed to temporarily return to Hong Kong by Chinese authorities. Rather than return, however, he instead went public about what had taken place. In April 2019, Lam moved to Taiwan and reopened Causeway Bay Books in Taipei a year after his arrival.

After reopening the bookstore in Taipei, Lam was once attacked by a man who threw red paint at him, but otherwise has been able to maintain himself.

Lam is a frequent speaker at political events that touch on the threats which Taiwan faces from mainland China. Lam has also called for greater support for Hongkongers from the Tsai administration. Given that he is such a high-profile figure, Lam personally is likely to find it relatively easy to gain permission to stay.

In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential elections, President Tsai Ing-wen made Hong Kong into a campaign issue. Given the dramatic events of the 2019 protests, Tsai raised the spectre of Taiwan becoming the next Hong Kong should the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the pro-China party in Taiwanese politics, win the presidential race.

At the same time, Tsai vowed greater support for Hongkongers, including through the opening up of further avenues for residency in Taiwan.

In fact, Hongkongers were mostly directed towards channels for study, work, or investment if they wished to travel to Taiwan. The young student activists most at risk of political persecution often did not have the means to move to Taiwan. There were cases in which student activists were denied the opportunity to travel to Taiwan and then later arrested.

This problem intensified after the onset of the Covid pandemic: Hong Kong activists such as the then-nineteen-year-old Tony Chung were prevented from traveling to Taiwan under the cover of coronavirus countermeasures. Chung, too, was later jailed.

The Tsai administration was mostly silent when it came to Hongkongers who secretly traveled to Taiwan by boat, but many were prevented from traveling to Taiwan when the borders were closed.

The status of Hongkongers in Taiwan is significantly complicated by the fact that they are not even technically foreign nationals–legally Taiwan remains the Republic of China, and it retains its Republic of China constitution.

The Tsai administration has been accused of stating that it will support Hongkongers in order to win votes, but then failing to carry out its campaign promise to help them out.

Moreover, in the past months there has been a visible hardening of public opinion against Hongkongers, with some people viewing them as potential Chinese spies, and others concerned that resident Hongkongers may pose economic competition to Taiwanese.

This article was originally published in New Bloom. Some edits for style.

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