๐ Book Censorship under the NSL
Related: ๐ Sheep Village|็พๆ็นชๆฌ | โ๏ธ Jimmy Lai|้ปๆบ่ฑ | ๐ต Glory to Hong Kong|้กๆฆฎๅ ๆญธ้ฆๆธฏ | Apple Daily|่ๆๆฅๅ ฑ | Stand News|็ซๅ ดๆฐ่ | Citizen News|็พๆฐ่ | GUHKST|โ้ฆๆธฏ่จ่ชๆฒป็ๅธซ็ธฝๅทฅๆ
Hong Kong was long one of the freest publishing centres in the Chinese-speaking world โ home to a combative free press and to bookshops that openly stocked titles banned across the border. Since the imposition of the National Security Law in June 2020 and the home-grown Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (the "Article 23 law") in 2024, that space has been dismantled. Media freedom fell first: Apple Daily was forced shut in June 2021 and its founder Jimmy Lai jailed for 20 years, Stand News was closed in December 2021, and Citizen News folded in January 2022. The censorship then spread from newsrooms to books, publishers and booksellers.
This page tracks that wider criminalisation of the printed word โ from the landmark Sheep Village case, which first turned a children's picture book into a "seditious publication," to the state's quiet purge of the public libraries and the 2026 raids that began arresting the booksellers themselves.
The Landmark Case: Sheep Village
The template for criminalising a book was set by the Sheep Village trilogy (็พๆ็นชๆฌ) โ three allegorical children's picture books, published by a speech-therapists' union, in which sheep stand for Hongkongers and wolves for the mainland authorities. In September 2022 five union members were jailed for 19 months for "conspiracy to publish seditious publications," and since 2023 people have been prosecuted merely for importing or possessing the books. It was the first time a Hong Kong court declared a book itself seditious under the post-2020 order.
โ Full case, the three books, and the archived editions: ๐ Sheep Village
The Crackdown Widens: From Authors to Readers to Booksellers
What began with the authors has widened to readers and importers and, in 2026, to the independent bookshops that stock politically sensitive titles โ now pursued under the 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (the Article 23 law), whose "seditious publication" offences carry up to seven years' imprisonment. Hong Kong publishes no list of banned books: Security Secretary Chris Tang has called such a list "pointless," saying in July 2026 that none is needed because the law is clear โ "if the content of a book incites hatred towards the government or judiciary, it is illegal" โ and that booksellers bear the same duty as food sellers, whose wares must "not cause stomach aches, [and are] not poisonous" (Bloomberg). The effect is to leave shops guessing where the "red line" falls and pulling titles pre-emptively โ the boundary often signalled only by denunciation in the state-controlled press, as when the Beijing-linked Wen Wei Po attacked even the low-profile veterans Luck Win and Elmbook for stocking "soft resistance" titles such as last colonial governor Chris Patten's The Hong Kong Diaries and essays by the late Apple Daily columnist Lee Yee. "They want people to work out the red lines for themselves, or to censor themselves before crossing them," notes University College London's Tong Kin-long (BBC). A Christian NGO has called the government's refusal to publish any list โ even after the arrests โ an "abuse of power" (HKFP). The pressure is administrative as much as criminal: since 2024 at least six companies across the independent book trade have faced simultaneous Inland Revenue tax audits โ echoing the parallel probes into Hong Kong's independent newsrooms โ alongside recurring fire, hygiene and licensing inspections; Book Punch was fined HK$6,000 in May 2026 for hosting a stand-up-comedy night without an entertainment licence (HKFP: tax probes ยท HKFP: escalating crackdown).
Purging the public libraries
Even before the booksellers were targeted, the state was quietly clearing its own shelves. Within weeks of the National Security Law taking effect in July 2020, Hong Kong Public Libraries pulled books by pro-democracy and localist figures โ among them Joshua Wong, Tanya Chan and Nathan Law โ "for review" (SCMP). After the Audit Commission urged the Leisure and Cultural Services Department in April 2023 to do more to keep collections compliant, the purge accelerated: local outlets counted at least 195 "political" titles removed over two years (and 255-plus Chinese e-books over three) โ from RTHK's Tiananmen documentaries and Liberal Studies textbooks to essays by ex-lawmaker Roy Kwong and travelogues by journalist Allan Au. Chief Executive John Lee said the city had a "duty to identify books with 'bad ideologies'," and the department ruled that flagged books must pass a government review before returning to shelves. As with the banned booksellers, the LCSD has never published the list of what it pulled โ while inviting the public to report "objectionable content" (some 140 such reports by 2025) (HKFP: purging ยท HKFP: John Lee ยท HKFP: 140 reports).
Raiding the bookshops
- 2023-03 National-security police and customs arrest two men (aged 38 and 50) for merely importing or possessing the Sheep Village books; Kurt Leung is charged over bringing 18 copies into Hong Kong. Amnesty International calls prosecuting people for possessing a children's book "a new low for human rights" (Amnesty).
- 2026-03 Police raid Book Punch on Tai Nan Street โ whose motto is "one punch to wake the reader" โ arresting the owner and three staff over allegedly seditious stock, reportedly including a biography of โ๏ธ Jimmy Lai|้ปๆบ่ฑ, jailed for 20 years in his national-security case.
- 2026-06 A second wave: on June 24 national-security police raid Hunter Bookstore in Sham Shui Po โ founded around 2022 by Leticia Wong Man-huen (33), a former pro-democracy district councillor, and known for stocking everything from pro-democracy accounts to Orwell's Animal Farm โ and arrest Wong and a 32-year-old man for sedition and money laundering. Both deny the charges and are released on bail (BBC).
- 2026-07-15 Amid the annual Hong Kong Book Fair, national-security police raid Have A Nice Stay (a Mong Kok shop founded in 2022 by former journalists) and Greenfield Book Store, arresting five people โ two men (aged 37 and 57) and three women (aged 30โ59), among them Have A Nice Stay co-founders Sum Wan-wah and Mandy Lau โ under Article 24 of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance for acts and publications with "seditious intention." The operation followed a Customs & Excise referral over an overseas book shipment. Among the seized titles was Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping's China by NPR correspondent Emily Feng โ a journalist Chinese state media had branded a "traitor to the nation" and denied entry to the mainland in 2022. It was the third round of bookshop arrests in four months (NPR CPJ CDT).
- 2026-07-16 After the raids, Security Secretary Chris Tang warns booksellers to guard against national-security risks but reiterates the government will not publish a banned-books list. Amnesty International's Sarah Brooks says the sedition offences show the security framework is being "weaponized to silence dissenting voices and eradicate spaces for free thought" (NPR).
- 2026-07 In a textbook Streisand effect, the traditional-Chinese edition of Feng's book โ published in Taiwan that April โ sells out within days of the arrests. Within weeks, three independent bookshops announce closures: Greenfield Book Store (after some 50 years in business), Have A Nice Stay (shutting Aug 30, citing financial pressure and an "elusive red line" over which books invite prosecution), and Elmbook โ the latter two also barred from the Hong Kong Book Fair (Taipei Times ยท HKFP).
- 2026-08 The squeeze reaches the cross-border supply chain. Hong Kong bookshops have long depended on Taiwan โ the world's largest publisher of traditional-Chinese books, shipped tax-free into the free port. Since new March 2026 rules let Customs seize anything suspected of "seditious intent," inspections have surged: booksellers report two of every three shipments now opened (versus roughly one check every few months before), delaying stock by up to a week and pushing Taiwanese publishers to self-censor (HKFP: customs checks ยท HKFP: escalating crackdown). Let Only Red Flowers Bloom was published in traditional Chinese by Taiwan's Acropolis Publishing that April; its editor-in-chief Jonathan Hung called the seized book "moderate." After the July raids, Jaguar Logistics โ which had carried the very books seized at Have A Nice Stay and Greenfield โ told clients it would no longer courier "prohibited publications," nor ship to any of the four raided shops (Greenfield, Have A Nice Stay, Book Punch, Hunter) (HKFP: logistics). Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council confirms Hong Kong is screening imports from the island.
- 2026-08 As of Jul 1, cumulative national-security arrests stand at 409 (212 charged; 183 convicted or awaiting sentence) โ 14 of them under the home-grown Article 23 law, 12 already convicted (HKFP).
Refusing to Go Quietly
Even under raids and surveillance, dozens of independent bookshops remain open across the city, and several have publicly resolved to carry on. The pressure predates the 2026 arrests: Mount Zero Books, one of the best-known independent shops, closed in March 2024 after what it described as near-weekly inspections by different government departments โ while police sometimes deployed outside its events to check attendees' identity cards and bags.
The shops that remain have turned that scrutiny into quiet defiance. At Hunter Bookstore โ whose owner, Leticia Wong Man-huen, was arrested for sedition and released on bail before planning a book talk within weeks โ a handwritten "Daily Record of Government Concern" by the till tallies visits from the buildings and hygiene departments, and a poster by the door cites Czech dissident Vรกclav Havel's call to "living in truth." A rack of postcards reproduces the twenty lessons of historian Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny โ "Be as courageous as you can"; "Be calm when the unthinkable arrives." Book Punch, whose owner was arrested and bailed in March over titles including a biography of โ๏ธ Jimmy Lai|้ปๆบ่ฑ, likewise kept its events going.
The shops' pull reaches across the border. For young mainland Chinese readers, a trip to a Hong Kong independent bookshop is a passage into a freer world โ a place to find titles scrubbed from China's internet and a communal warmth they say the mainland lacks. 23-year-old Chen Zhu travelled from Guangzhou to track down The Unburned Book, a Taiwanese poet's reflection on exiled Tiananmen protesters; others describe staff-written shelf-notes and a wall of black sticky notes at Hunter mourning the 168 victims of the 2025 Tai Po tower fire. Since 2023 Hunter and other shops have co-hosted "Reading Everywhere," an alternative book fair timed to run alongside the government-linked Hong Kong Book Fair. "Buying a book," one mainland reader said after the raids, "has become a quiet way of showing support, and a quiet form of resistance" (BBC).
Observers see that persistence as the point. Interviewed on NPR's Here & Now, UC Irvine historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom described the shops as evidence of Hong Kong's "enduring spirit of creative resistance" against a party that prefers quiet, administrative repression to spectacle (WBUR). As former journalist and ex-lawmaker Gwyneth Ho โ now serving a seven-year subversion sentence โ has argued, the deeper legacy of Hong Kong's protest years is that people learned to make their own choices and influence others through them. "Bookshops are like trees," the owner of one now-shuttered shop told Bloomberg. "They grow by themselves" (Bloomberg).
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