Chinese journalist who defected is missing from Thailand

A Chinese journalist who said he was fed up with a life as a government informant and fled China last year has been missing from Thailand since January 11, his wife said today, raising concerns he might have been abducted by Beijing.
He Fangmei said she last spoke to her husband, Li Xin, around 7:40 am on January 11, when he was riding a train from Bangkok to Nong Khai in northeast Thailand. She said she fears the journalist was taken back to China by Chinese security forces.
Li, formerly a website editor for a Chinese media group, fled last October to India, where he told the media he could no longer bear working as a secretive informant for the Chinese government.

Li's wife said he was planning to seek asylum in Thailand before he went missing.
The journalist's vanishing is the latest in a string of disappearances of activists in Southeast Asia that have raised suspicions of Chinese involvement.
Last October, Hong Kong publisher Gui Minhai suddenly disappeared from his apartment in Pattaya, Thailand. Gui only emerged late Tuesday on China's state broadcaster, where he said he returned to China to turn himself in for an old crime, although his friends insist Gui was forcibly taken away.

Four other people connected to the publishing company that sells gossip books on China's politics and politicians have disappeared.

One of them, Lee Bo, has claimed he returned to China voluntarily through handwritten notes to his wife, but supporters believe he was kidnapped and smuggled into mainland.
Beijing also took back the teenager son of a detained rights lawyer from Myanmar after he fled China.
Li, 37, escaped from China in October to India, where he revealed he had been an informant for the government. He said he was coerced into the role after the government detained him on suspicion of endangering state security for sharing information with the rival Taiwanese government.
"I believe there are many people like me who are working on behalf of the authoritarian government. But I cannot be one of them," Li said in a recent interview from New Delhi. "This kind of work goes against my own nature, and I was extremely miserable.