A second Hong Kong bookseller who went missing and was found to have been detained in China has returned home, refusing to discuss his case, Hong Kong police have said.

Cheung Chi Ping was one of five Hong Kong booksellers specialising in salacious publications about Chinese leaders to go missing last year.

Lui Por, a colleague from the same store, reappeared in the city on Friday.

"Cheung Chi Ping requested police to cancel his missing person case and stated that he did not require any assistance from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government or police," the police said in a statement.

"Cheung refused to disclose other details."

Police had said on Wednesday that authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong had told them Mr Lui and his colleagues, Mr Cheung and Lam Wing Kee, would be released on bail in coming days.

Two other missing members of the company, Gui Minhai and Lee Bo, had been in Thailand and Hong Kong respectively when they disappeared.

Mr Gui appeared on state television in January and tearfully confessed to a fatal drink-driving incident over a decade ago.

He appeared on Chinese television again late last month with three of his colleagues confirming for the first time they had been detained for "illegal book trading" in mainland China.

Mr Lee, a British passport holder, told China's Phoenix Television last week that he had not been kidnapped by Chinese authorities, as many suspected, but had snuck into China illegally and that he would renounce his British citizenship.

The booksellers' plight had provoked concerns that Beijing was using shadowy tactics to weaken freedoms in Hong Kong, which has been governed under a "one country, two systems" formula since its return to China from British rule in 1997.

A number of governments have expressed concern about the disappearances, which some diplomats fear were abductions by Chinese agents.

China's Foreign Ministry has said its law enforcement officials would never do anything illegal, especially not overseas, and called on foreign governments not to interfere in Hong Kong affairs.

Reuters