Hong Kong bookseller Lee Bo, who went missing three months ago and surfaced in China, is already on his way back over the border after a brief return home, local media reported.
British citizen Lee, 65, returned to Hong Kong yesterday after disappearing in late December, in a case that has raised alarm over Beijing's tightening grip on the region.
But Lee crossed back into the mainland today, just a day after he arrived, according to local media who followed him to the border.
"It's a release with Chinese characteristics," China expert Willy Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong told AFP.
"The fact of the matter is that he has not really been fully released... He needs to report back to China," he said.
Lee is one of five Hong Kong booksellers who went "missing" in recent months -- the other four are now under criminal investigation on the mainland linked to trading illegal books in China.
The men all worked for the Mighty Current publishing house, which produced salacious titles about political intrigue and love affairs at the highest levels of Chinese politics.
Lee's case caused the greatest outcry because he was the only bookseller to disappear from Hong Kong, prompting accusations that Chinese law enforcement agents were operating in the semi-autonomous city, illegal under its constitution.
Three of the other booksellers went missing from southern mainland China and one from Thailand in October.
Lee had returned to Hong Kong Thursday, where he insisted a missing person case on him should be dropped and that he was a free man.
He told Hong Kong's pro-Beijing Phoenix TV that he "may need to return to the mainland multiple times to assist in the investigation".
Lee vowed not to sell "fabricated books", according to Chinese news portal thepaper.Cn, and said he would no longer run Hong Kong's Causeway Bay bookstore, outlet for Mighty Current's titles, which remains shuttered.
"The homeland is very prosperous and formidable. I am very proud to be Chinese," it quoted him as saying.
