A British lecturer has gone missing in southern China after selling a property for the equivalent of £820,000.

Hilary St John Bower, 60, taught at Hong Kong Polytechnic University but lived in the Chinese mainland city of Shenzhen.

He went missing on March 22 as he returned to Shenzhen having crossed the nearby border from Hong Kong. Mr Bower had reached an agreement to sell a property in Shenzhen for HK$9 million (£820,000), but without receiving the funds.

Richard Charles, a friend, said that Mr Bower’s disappearance could be linked to this deal.

“I do know that after buying at the bottom of the property market a good few years ago, he was expecting to be paid somewhere in the region of HK$9 million for a property he just sold in Shekou [an area of Shenzhen],” he told the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong daily.

Mr Bower lived in Shenzhen with his girlfriend and their six-year-old son. He was recorded as crossing the Lo Wu border from Hong Kong on March 22.

Eight days then passed before his girlfriend reported his disappearance to the Hong Kong Police at Tsim Sha Tsui station on March 30.

Since then, the investigation into Mr Bower’s fate appears to have made no progress. A spokeswoman at the British Embassy in Beijing said: “We are providing assistance to the family of a British national reported missing in southern China. We are in contact with local authorities in Hong Kong and Guangzhou.”