How an escalating crackdown on Hong Kong’s independent bookstores put Taiwan publishers in the spotlight

After climbing four flights of stairs in the August summer heat, Helen was met with a locked metal gate and a printed sign saying Have a Nice Stay had permanently closed.

A notice outside Have a Nice Stay saying it is permanently closed. Photo: Hillary Leung/HKFP.

“I didn’t think it would be shut already,” Helen told HKFP on the top floor of the walk-up building in Mong Kok, where the independent bookstore is located.

Her confusion was understandable. Have a Nice Stay was not meant to close until August 30 – the bookstore said in July that it was winding up owing to financial strain and “unclear” political red lines.

But a day after the announcement, staff were arrested for alleged sedition under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, also known as Article 23. Have a Nice Stay never reopened.

Fellow independent bookstore Greenfield Bookstore also saw arrests on the same day, announcing its closure two weeks later. That followed an announcement from Elmbook in early July saying it was also shutting down.

Notes of support outside Have a Nice Stay, left after it closed for good. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

This year alone, staff from four bookstores were arrested by national security police. In March, staff from Book Punch were arrested, and in June, staff from Hunter Bookstore were apprehended.

The arrests also came on the heels of independent bookshops being barred again from the annual Hong Kong Book fair earlier that month.

Since 2022, a litany of new, independent bookshops – which had carved out space in the national security law era – found themselves barred from the annual fair. But Elmtree and Luck Win were unassuming retailers with decades of history. They were atypical targets, not known for attracting government scrutiny.

This time, the arrests have put the close relationship between Hong Kong booksellers and Taiwanese publishers in the spotlight, sparking fresh concerns about the future of the city’s independent bookshops.

A woman is escorted away from ‘Have a Nice Stay’ independent bookstore by Hong Kong police on July 15, 2026. Her t-shirt reads: “I am staff of a bookstore.” Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

The latest crackdown came after Customs intercepted “a batch of books with seditious intention” being shipped to Hong Kong from overseas, according to a government statement. Local media reported the shipments originated from Taiwan.

According to local media reports, the shipments came from Taiwan. The book Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China was named to be among the titles.

The title includes interviews with persecuted groups such as Uyghurs and ethnic Mongolians, as well as Hong Kong protesters in exile abroad.

Uptick in Customs inspections

Hong Kong bookstores, whether mainstream or independent, have long relied heavily on books published in Taiwan – the world’s largest publisher of traditional Chinese books.

Beyond a shared use of traditional Chinese, in contrast with the simplified script used in mainland China, both places have similar cultures and an interest in each other’s social developments.

Hong Kong’s Hunter Bookstore in Sham Shui Po on July 9, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

And as Hong Kong is a free port, no taxes need to be paid for those books.

In March, the government introduced new rules empowering Customs to seize material if they suspect it carries seditious intent.

But even before that, Hong Kong authorities appeared to have heightened their scrutiny of Taiwanese books coming into the city.

In early February, Book Punch shared a photo on social media platform Threads of a stamp reading “examined by H.K. Customs & Excise Service,” and said it has been inspected “many, many times” lately.

Two independent bookstore owners told HKFP in August that they had been seeing frequent inspections by Customs officers this year.

“From the end of 2025 until now, as many as two out of every three shipments get inspected,” M, one bookseller, said in Cantonese.

An independent book fair at Hunter Bookstore on July 17, 2025. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Customs inspections meant they only received their book shipments days, or around a week later, M told HKFP: “This creates uncertainties for us, for example if the books are meant for an event that we have scheduled.”

Another bookseller, who asked to be known as K, said that all of her shipments since the arrest of Book Punch’s staff in late March had been inspected.

The shipping delays are especially costly for heavily sought-after new releases, she told HKFP, as customers may turn to online retailers instead of buying from them.

“If they have to wait so long, then they would go to Books.com.tw to order, and they can receive it in, like, three days,” K said, referring to a Taiwanese e-commerce site seen as the local equivalent of Amazon.

“We would lose [our business] to them,” she said in Cantonese.

In response to HKFP, Customs said its department is “an essential component of safeguarding national security.”

Many book lovers visit Greenfield Bookstore on July 30, 2026 after the 50-year-old shop announces its closure. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

“If articles with seditious intent are discovered, Hong Kong Customs will seize the items in accordance with the law and, depending on the circumstances, hand them over to the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force for follow-up,” it said.

The frequent Customs inspections are the newest in a long list of ways booksellers feel the government is targeting them.

Since last year, some independent bookstores and publishers have been facing extensive tax audits, with the Inland Revenue Department inspecting both their personal and their bookstore’s financial records dating back years. 

Booksellers have questioned whether it is worth auditing independent bookstores when they operate on a small scale and do not see much profit.

See also: Exclusive: ‘Is it a coincidence?’ – Hong Kong independent bookstores, publishers face simultaneous tax probes

Aside from tax audits, some also regularly encounter inspections from government departments, which deploy officers to the bookstore to check that it is in compliance with anything from fire exit laws to possessing licences for events.

A calendar in Hunter Bookstore, displayed on June 10, 2025, showing the dates that government officers conducted inspections. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Occasionally, the inspections have resulted in court appearances and fines. Book Punch has been penalised at least three times, with the most recent known instance being in May, when it was fined HK$6,000 for holding a stand-up comedy show on its premises without an entertainment licence.

Before booksellers felt they had become a target, they were watching as public libraries quietly removed political titles as early as 2021.

The titles that disappeared included ones about the Tiananmen crackdown and the 2019 protests and unrest, as well as about China and Hong Kong politics in general.

Books unrelated to politics were also removed, such as one about sex education written by late pro-democracy lawmaker Shiu Ka-chun, and critical literary analyses by democrat Margaret Ng.

The government has refused to provide a banned book list, leaving booksellers to gauge where the red lines are.

People attend the Hong Kong Book Fair in Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, on July 17, 2026. The locations where booths of independent booksellers once stood have been turned into reading areas this year. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Books barred from book fairs and removed from shelves in public libraries offered some clues, but those same titles have also continued to be sold in bookstores without issue.

“It’s hard to know where the red lines are,” K said.

She added that she had not deliberately removed any books from shelves. But after all 70 copies of Hong Kong Diaries, a memoir written by the city’s last colonial governor Chris Patten, were sold, she did not import more copies, she said.

‘Inseparable relationship’ 

Jonathan Hung, the editor-in-chief of the book’s publisher Acropolis Publishing, told HKFP he was surprised that Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China could have led to arrests at Have a Nice Stay and Greenfield Bookstore.

He described the book as “moderate.”

Greenfield Bookstore. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Originally written in English by American journalist Emily Feng, a traditional Chinese version of the book was released by Taiwanese publisher Acropolis Publishing in April.

Hung said that, in recent years, he had already noticed a trend of Hong Kong bookstores ordering fewer books from his publishing house – and he suspected it was due to the political environment in the city.

“I think it is not just our publishing company,” Hung said in Mandarin. “In general, I think there are fewer history and politics books from Taiwan coming to Hong Kong.”

Hung said the shrinking foothold in the Hong Kong market was not necessarily debilitating for his publishing house, as their main audience was still Taiwanese readers: “But it is a pity, because we have many books on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan [that Hongkongers would like].”

Tang Siu Wa, a Hong Kong writer who is the editor-in-chief of Taiwan publisher Gotta Press, said she feared that the arrests would discourage logistics companies in Taiwan from handling shipments for independent bookstores in the city.

Hong Kong writer and editor of Taiwan publisher Gotta Press Tang Siu Wa. Photo: Tang Siu Wa, via Facebook.

After the arrests, Jaguar Logistics – which K said had shipped the books seized in the Have a Nice Stay and Greenfield Bookstore raids – issued a notice saying it will not courier “prohibited publications” to the city. It said it would also not ship to bookstores under government investigation.

Tang said logistics firms might be reluctant to do business with Hong Kong independent bookstores because they could lose money if the goods are shipped, but not ultimately delivered: “This is a very practical problem,” she told HKFP in Cantonese.

But she added that she did not think Taiwanese publishers would give up on the Hong Kong market, their largest export destination.

“The book industries in Taiwan and Hong Kong have an inseparable relationship,” she said. “When there is a major issue in Hong Kong, it drives a related surge of sales in Taiwan’s publishing industry.”

Two other Taiwan publishing companies who HKFP reached out to declined to be interviewed.

Hong Kong’s Hunter Bookstore in Sham Shui Po on July 9, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Tang added that another way the industry connections in the two places have been strengthened in recent years was the trend of Hongkongers publishing books in Taiwan.

Some have moved to Taiwan, part of an emigration wave that followed the passing of the security law, while others were choosing to spend time there and publish in Taiwan, believing the environment to be freer there.

“They feel more at ease publishing overseas,” she said.

‘Sense of crisis’

M told HKFP that the bookstore had sought out a different logistics company to fulfil their latest shipment of books from Taiwan. It arrived on Monday and was not checked by Customs, she said.

She was, however, asked by the logistics firm to submit a list of book titles that were in the shipment.

Greenfield Bookstore in Mong Kok on July 30, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

“I wouldn’t say it’s particularly lucky,” she said of the smoother delivery. “The situation is still very fragile… it’s very easy for a company to tell us they won’t take our business anymore.”

For Hong Kong’s independent publishers, the string of independent bookstore closures means losing vital sales channels.

Benny, a publisher, told HKFP that some of the bookstores that announced closures were major stockists of their titles: “There is a sense of crisis,” he said in Cantonese. “What if even more bookstores close?”

He said that most independent publishers, including his, sent the majority of their titles to independent outlets, as opposed to mainstream stores.

Hong Kong’s book industry is dominated by mainstream bookstores under the Beijing-owned Sino United Publishing giant, which owns bookstores like Commercial Press and JP Books.

“If more independent bookstores close, then naturally independent publishers may also be forced to close,” Benny said.

JP Books. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Outside Have a Nice Stay, Helen said she had blocked out her Saturday afternoon for an independent bookstore crawl. She said she was off to Elmbook and Greenfield Bookstore next – all three retailers are within a 10-minute walking radius of each other in Mong Kok.

Both Greenfield Bookstore and Elmbook will close next year – Greenfield in February, and Elmbook in April, when their leases end.

As a loyal customer of independent bookstores, Helen said she had memories of browsing titles at Greenfield with her friends during her secondary school days. The shop has a history of half a century.

“I’ve always felt that the selection of books at independent bookstores is more special. Through their curation, you can see that the booksellers have certain opinions,” Helen said in Cantonese.

JP Books. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

She said that she liked the personal touch at independent bookstores. In some, booksellers would write handwritten notes about their favourite titles, and strike up conversations with customers to offer recommendations.

“I feel a bit disgusted by some mainstream bookstores, which just display whatever the bestsellers are,” adding that they tended to be on topics such as travel or “get rich quick.”

“It’s so commercial,” she said. “They reduce books to commodities.”

Asked if she was looking for anything in particular during her book crawl, Helen said she wasn’t.

But she added: “If there are any books that I think are at risk of disappearing, I’ll buy them first. Who knows if I’ll be able to get them in the future?”