Chinese-born citizen of Sweden was snatched while travelling with European diplomats on train to Beijing

The United States has called on Beijing to free the missing Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai after he was snatched last weekend by Chinese agents while travelling to Beijing with two European diplomats.



State department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Washington was deeply concerned about the detention of Gui, 53, a Hong Kong-based publisher who specialised in often thinly sourced tabloid-style books about China’s leadership.

Chinese agents are suspected of abducting Gui from his holiday home in Thailand in October 2015 during a roundup of booksellers – including one British citizen – with whom he had worked. The publisher, who was born in China but has been a Swedish citizen since 1992, subsequently resurfaced in mainland China where he was held in the eastern city of Ningbo and made what supporters said was a forced confession.

Last autumn Gui had appeared close to release amid reports that he was “half-free” and living under surveillance. However, on 20 January he was taken for a second time, on this occasion while taking a train to Beijing with two Swedish diplomats. Gui’s current whereabouts are a mystery and China’s foreign ministry this week rebuffed calls for it to explain his detention.

Nauer, the state department spokeswoman, said: “We call on Chinese authorities to explain the reasons and legal basis for Mr Gui’s arrest and detention, disclose his whereabouts, and allow him freedom of movement and the freedom to leave China.”

Beijing has attempted to cast growing outrage over Gui’s treatment as a western media conspiracy to undermine China’s one-party political system. “The police are not obliged ... to please western media,” Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times, a Communist party tabloid, wrote on Twitter this week.