BEIJING — Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai has just been sentenced to 10 years in Chinese prison, in what some say is a warning from Beijing that acts of resistance will be strictly punished.<br /><br />CNN reports that 55-year-old Gui was put on trial by a court in Ningbo for "providing intelligence" overseas. According to a court statement posted online, he pleaded guilty to the charge and will not appeal.<br /><br />Back in 2015, Gui, a naturalized Swedish citizen, disappeared from his holiday home in Thailand. Around the same time, four other Hong Kong-based booksellers went missing. <br /><br />All were connected to Mighty Current Media, which published salacious books on President Xi Jin-pooh and the rest of China's ruling elite. They later surfaced in Chinese police custody.<br /><br />In 2016, Gui appeared on Chinese state television claiming he returned to China voluntarily to face justice over a drunk driving incident over a decade earlier. <br /><br />Chinese police announced he'd been released from custody a year later, but was not allowed to leave the county.<br /><br />He was taken for a second time by 10 plain clothes policemen in 2018, while traveling on a train to Beijing with two Swedish diplomats.<br /><br />Sweden has repeatedly called on China to free Gui, on the grounds that he is a Swedish citizen. But China warned Sweden not to interfere, and despite having a law that bans dual citizenship, officials claim Gui is "a Chinese national first and foremost."
