China Power | Society | East Asia

Hong Kong’s National Security Law Comes for the Bookstores

The reorientation – and restriction – of the city’s once-vibrant civil society continues.

On July 15, the Hong Kong national security police raided two bookstores in Mong Kok: Have a Nice Stay (founded by former journalists) and Greenfield Bookstore. The police arrested five people on suspicion of selling seditious publications. 

This falls into a larger pattern of national security operations against bookstores, with Book Punch and Hunter Bookstore being targeted in March and June, respectively. Book Punch and Hunter are well-known and established bookstores within Hong Kong, and the government cracking down on them sends a signal to all independently operated bookstores and civic spaces. 

These raids represent a qualitative shift in the approach of the national security police, which had hitherto tolerated the existence of independent bookstores. The businesses in question were more than just bookstores; they functioned as semi-civic spaces, hosting typical events such as discussions and book talks but also yoga classes. Their function was to build and sustain a community, which became more difficult in Hong Kong amid the rapid breakdown of civil society following the 2020 National Security Law and the subsequent installation of a national security complex. The July 15 arrests were made under the 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which broadly outlined internal and external threats.

Independent bookstores in Hong Kong have a long history of being political. Hong Kong stores and publishers often served as a gateway to sell sensitive books that were censored in the mainland. Memoirs of political figures, for example, could be bought in street stalls easily visible to tourists from Mainland China. 

Not all independent bookstores have a political function, of course, but especially those founded in the wake of 2019 protests had a particular identity in mind. Many of them purposefully sought to foster an alternative civil society that became increasingly difficult to maintain. As I found in my research, they navigated Hong Kong’s national security clampdown starting in 2020 through delicate balancing acts such as the careful curation of books, community building, and calculated ambiguity. 

The recent prosecutions, however, show that the boundary of acceptable behavior has shifted once again. The book store Have a Nice Stay had already announced its closure before the raid took place, citing “uncertain red lines.” When it becomes arguably impossible to adapt, a decade-old model of cultural resistance begins to fade away, with consequences for what remains of Hong Kong civil society. 

For the authorities, there are benefits to maintaining what one could term strategic ambiguity. However, one might argue that even the national security police themselves do not know what or where the “red lines” are. Communities, civic spaces, and speech in Hong Kong will come under increasing examination as the government uses and ever-finer comb to find supposed threats. With the obvious targets out of the way, the range of what will be allowed seems set to shrink still further. Meanwhile, the police, whose budget has ballooned in the past years, need to justify their existence even as there is less and less to scrutinize.

The attention being paid to bookstores therefore shows a new development in the approach of the national security police toward perceived threats. Traditional loci of activism such as labor and student unions have already been dealt with in recent years, and now the gaze has shifted to spaces that are able to foster a sense of Hong Kong identity and society different from the one mandated by the government. 

Independent bookstores are particularly suspect because of the wares that they sell. Books hold powerful ideas, including........

© The Diplomat