Hong Kong's national security police raided a small independent bookstore in the Sham Shui Po district on the evening of June 24, arresting its owner and a second person on charges of sedition and money laundering — the latest sign that Beijing's grip on the city's remaining civic spaces is tightening with little room left to maneuver.
The target was Hunter Bookstore, a neighborhood shop that had become a quiet refuge for readers seeking books unavailable through mainstream channels. Its owner, Wong Man-huen, 33, a former district councillor of the now-dissolved Civic Party, was arrested alongside a 32-year-old man. Police seized books, documents, and other materials they described as having "seditious intent," including a biography of jailed media mogul Jimmy Lai and works by political cartoonist Zunzi.
The timing was conspicuous. The raid came days before the 29th anniversary of China's resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong and the sixth anniversary of the National Security Law — a period when authorities have historically moved to signal the boundaries of permissible expression.
Selling Books Is Now a Potential Crime in Hong Kong
The charges filed against Wong combine two separate laws in a way that legal observers say reflects a deliberate escalation. Under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance — the homegrown security law passed in 2024 that supplements the Beijing-imposed NSL — sedition carries a maximum sentence of seven years. The money laundering charge, filed under the Organized and Serious Crimes Ordinance, carries a maximum of 14 years. Prosecutors appear to be linking the bookstore's activities to alleged transfers from foreign political organizations, meaning any overseas connection could potentially be framed as foreign interference.
Pro-establishment media had previously labeled Hunter Bookstore a hub of "soft resistance," criticizing it for hosting talks and discussion events for young people and students. Plain-clothes officers who carried out the raid even tore down a strip of Cantonese song lyrics posted on the shop's door — a line from a popular song that, in the eyes of national security police, had apparently become a sensitive symbol.
Wong opened Hunter Bookstore in 2022, saying at the time she hoped to help Hongkongers who felt powerless rediscover strength through reading. The shop curated monthly themes, organized community events, and in 2025 co-organized an uncensored book fair called "Reading Everywhere" with several independent publishers — a direct response to the increasingly sanitized official book fair.
A Pattern Of Raids That Has Eliminated Hong Kong's Independent Literary Space
Hunter Bookstore is not an isolated case. In March, the owner and three staff members of another independent bookstore, Tung Chung Fist Bookstore, were arrested on similar charges of selling publications with seditious intent — including, again, the Jimmy Lai biography. Two raids on two bookstores within months of each other, on overlapping charges, suggest a coordinated pattern rather than random enforcement.
Human Rights Watch Asia director Elaine Pearson described the raids as exposing the "absurdity and danger" of Hong Kong's national security apparatus — one in which selling books and hosting public talks can now be treated as criminal acts.
The progression has been steady. From the prosecution of the Sheep Village children's picture book authors, to the shuttering of Stand News, to the raids on independent bookstores and small publishers, authorities have constructed a broad enforcement framework in which any content likely to generate negative sentiment toward the government, the judiciary, or law enforcement can be classified as sedition. The red line, critics note, has shifted from advocating independence to simply expressing discontent.
Hong Kong Is Becoming What Mainland China Already Is
The broader context is difficult to ignore. Independent bookstores have largely disappeared from mainland China under pressure from the Propaganda Department and market regulators. The celebrated Shanghai bookstore Jifeng, once a gathering place for China's public intellectuals, ultimately relocated to Washington after repeated confrontations with Chinese authorities. What is happening in Hong Kong, the article's author observes, is not unprecedented — it is the same "national security adjustment period" the mainland went through, arriving in Hong Kong on a delayed timeline.
Since the NSL took effect in 2020, Hong Kong's pro-democracy organizations have dissolved, its independent media have been shut down, and its independent bookstores had briefly filled the vacuum as the last surviving spaces for civil society. That space is now closing.
Beijing and the Hong Kong government have yet to comment publicly on the Hunter Bookstore raid. The State Council's Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, the Central Liaison Office, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Hong Kong office have all remained silent. On social media platforms including Threads, young people in Taiwan have begun organizing online solidarity campaigns in response to the arrests.
Hong Kong's Chief Executive John Lee recently reiterated that the city must not forget the lessons of the past, and that national security risks continue to come from "external elements." For the owner of a small bookstore in Sham Shui Po, that framing has become the justification for her arrest. （Related： Blank Front Pages, Shuttered Newsrooms: Apple Daily Exhibition Opens in Taipei to Preserve Hong Kong's Banned Press History ｜ Latest ）
