The 2016 Hong Kong book fair, the most important event in the city’s literary calendar, opened its doors on Wednesday to familiar long queues and hordes of special security personnel on watch for potential stampedes. Inside, it was business as usual: a large convention hall divided into genres, with one large area just for religious publishers, complete with saffron-robed monks writing calligraphy and dispensing blessings. Media types gathered on the first floor where a local starlet in a low-cut dress posed for photographers in front of a stand devoted to fashion books and magazines.

But this year is the first fair held in Hong Kong since the disappearances of five booksellers from the city in late 2015. For many visitors, the attention is squarely on the few publishers still willing to sell “forbidden books”. What has happened to the five men has profoundly shaken Hong Kong’s book trade: Gui Minhai, owner of the Mighty Current publishing house and the Causeway Bay Books shop, remains in detention in mainland China after having disappeared from his holiday house in Thailand in October 2015, only to reappear in a tearful televised confession in January 2016. Mighty Current editor Lee Bo was also reportedly abducted from Hong Kong and later reappeared in March, as did manager Lui Por. Just two days later, business manager Cheung Chi-ping was released, after he disappeared in October during a trip to see family.

Causeway Bay manager Lam Wing-kee reappeared most recently, in June, after skipping bail when he was allowed to return to Hong Kong to obtain some documents. Since then, Lam has denounced his and his colleagues’ abduction and incarceration in China. “Hongkongers will not bow down before brute force,” Lam said at a press conference in June.

Though there are fewer stands selling political and “banned” books than in previous years, two major publishers have a big presence: Greenfield, a publisher and distributor with lots of politically sensitive titles in its catalogue, and Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), which has published one the highlights of this year’s fair – a four-volume collection of private papers and speeches by the disgraced communist leader Zhao Ziyang, a reformist purged in the aftermath of the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989. Not too far away are Subculture, and Initium, two smaller publishers who carry politically sensitive books. Many customers hover nearby, but though they browse, sales do not appear so brisk.

“We have had no problem in printing or distributing our four volumes on Zhao Ziyang,” said one editor at CUHK Publishing, who asked to remain anonymous. “But the impact on the fair is very strong. The controls on travellers have been strengthened, and many who came to Hong Kong to buy books censored in mainland China have stopped buying them, as they may get into trouble at the border.”

Many stands, however, are simply no longer here. Mirror Media Group, a group well known for its books on the private lives of the top leaders and the intrigues among the Chinese elite, is among those that are absent. A phone call to one of their employees ends abruptly, as he hangs up after saying: “We are not at the fair. It is as simple as that. Thank you for your concern.”

What has befallen the five booksellers has cast a heavy pall across the industry in Hong Kong. “We now have problems at both ends of the book chain”, says Bao Pu, of New Century Press, a publishing house known for high-quality political works banned on the mainland. “Printers are not willing to print politically sensitive books, throughout the Hong Kong printing industry. This is a very serious situation. The printers are deciding what can be read. At the other end of the chain there are the bookstores, and most of them will no longer sell this kind of book because it is considered dangerous.

“Also, you see fewer political books because in this situation, we publish less. I think that Hong Kong is no longer a place that supports independent publishing, since the Causeway Bay Books event [when Gui Minhai was arrested].”

Along the busy corridors of the fair, though, most customers came to buy promotional products sold in conjunction with books: blenders with a hefty discount for those who purchase cookbooks, stationery and stuffed toys offered with textbooks and language manuals. The few stands with politically sensitive volumes have large, blown-up pictures of various Communist party leaders and of the covers of the books that talk about them. But among the throngs of mothers and schoolchildren pushing trolleys to fill with school manuals at a discounted price, it is easy to lose sight of them.

