Nearly a year ago I wrote about censorship in China’s publishing industry in this blog post. Now five people have disappeared in recent months—all of them employees of Mighty Publishing House, which is known for publishing books critical of the Chinese government. Don’t worry though, according to a cryptic letter one of the missing persons is “fine.”

If it turns out that the Chinese government is responsible, state-sanctioned kidnappings are on a whole different level than censoring  certain passages in a book. In a weird way, could this be a positive sign that the Far East’s freedom of speech battle is gaining momentum if the government is responding so drastically? I have no idea, but I do know that it’s a lot easier to work in this industry when you don’t need to worry about such things. And for that, I’m grateful and as Lee Greenwood would say, proud to be an American.