'After Hong Kong, Taiwan, Then Japan': Causeway Bay Bookseller Lam Wing-kee Dies at 70
- Lam Wing-kee, the Causeway Bay Books owner once detained by Chinese authorities, has died at 70
- He fled to Taiwan and reopened his bookstore in Taipei in 2020
- His enduring warning traced the spread of speech suppression: Hong Kong, then Taiwan, then Japan
Lam Wing-kee, the Causeway Bay Books owner detained by Chinese authorities for selling banned titles, has died in Taipei at 70. His bookstore opened twice — once in Hong Kong, once in exile in Taiwan — and that alone compresses a chapter of East Asian history. A business publication records this obituary for a practical reason: freedom of speech and information is market infrastructure. Hong Kong's erosion as a financial center began not with capital controls but with bookstores and newspapers; capital votes with its feet, and its road signs are often non-financial indicators like press freedom. Lam's warning — after Hong Kong comes Taiwan, then Japan — reads today less like prophecy than a checklist. The price of liberty is always quoted after it becomes scarce.