One Country, One System?
The last bookshop in Hong Kong selling titles banned in Communist mainland China has closed. A British protectorate until 1997 and benefitting from a One Country, Two Systems agreement with Beijing ever since, the city has a historically independent publishing scene. The closure of the People’s Bookstore, however, follows the suspicious disappearance of five employees of another independent bookseller in 2015, both targets of a recent crackdown on press freedoms by the central Chinese government.
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