Selling a Book Is Now a Crime in Hong Kong

The sign on the door said: "Resting for a day due to emergency. Sorry for the inconvenience."

Behind that understated notice, Book Punch — an independent bookstore in Hong Kong — had just lost its owner and three staff members to police custody. Their alleged offense: selling a biography.

On March 24, 2026, Hong Kong police arrested Pong Yat-ming, owner of Book Punch, along with three shopkeepers. The charge was selling "seditious" publications. The publication in question was The Troublemaker, a biography of jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai, written by his former business director Mark Clifford, now based in New York. Broadcaster TVB first reported the arrests. Police, when asked, declined to comment directly, saying only that they "will take actions according to actual circumstances and in accordance with the law."

Who Is Jimmy Lai, and Why Does His Biography Matter

Jimmy Lai is the founder of Apple Daily, Hong Kong's now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper. In February 2026, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in what became the city's largest-ever national security trial — convicted of collusion with foreign forces and sedition. Apple Daily had already been forced to close in 2021.

The biography's author, Mark Clifford, was a former director at Next Digital, the media group Lai founded. When Reuters reached him for comment, Clifford didn't mince words: "If true, it's a sad and ironic commentary that selling a book on a man who is in jail for his activities as a journalist, for promoting free expression, would be subject to sedition."

Under Hong Kong's Article 23 national security law — enacted locally in 2024 — sedition carries up to 7 years in prison, rising to 10 years if collusion with an "external force" is involved. Beijing had already imposed broader national security legislation on the city in 2020, following months of pro-democracy protests in 2019. Hong Kong and Chinese officials have consistently argued the laws were necessary to restore stability.

The Day Before the Arrests

The timing is hard to ignore. One day before the bookstore arrests, on March 23, Hong Kong's government gazetted new amendments to the implementation rules of the Beijing-imposed national security law. Two changes stand out.

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First, customs officers can now seize items deemed to carry "seditious intention" — without a warrant. Second, anyone suspected of breaching the national security law can be compelled by police, with a magistrate's warrant, to hand over phone or computer passwords. Refusal means jail time and a fine.

The rule change was announced. The next day, a bookseller was arrested for carrying a book about a man convicted under that same law. Whether or not that sequence was deliberate, the effect is the same: a signal sent across the city's independent bookselling community.

A Community Under Quiet Pressure

By the following day, two other independent bookstores announced temporary closures. The ripple was immediate.

Hong Kong's independent bookstores occupy a specific niche. They carry political and social titles that mainstream chains — many of which are controlled by Chinese state-owned Sino United Publishing — don't stock. They host book talks, workshops, and community events. In a city where civil society has been significantly curtailed since 2020, these stores have quietly become some of its last gathering points.

The pressure on them has been building for some time. Hunter Bookstore has reported regular inspections by various government departments and tax probes. Book Punch announced last year that it had cancelled several events due to anonymous complaints. Mount Zero, an independent store on Hong Kong Island, shut down entirely in 2024 after a string of anonymous complaints triggered repeated visits from authorities.

Now Pong Yat-ming was already in the middle of a separate legal case: in January, he pleaded not guilty to three charges of operating an unregistered school after hosting a Spanish language class at his store.

What Happens When the Rules Are Unclear

Hunter Bookstore responded to the arrests on Instagram with a statement that was both defiant and revealing. It said it would remain open — but urged the government to publish and maintain an updated public list of publications deemed seditious. "Books and publishing are not just independent businesses," it wrote. "It is the cultural foundation of the entire society."

That request cuts to the heart of what makes this kind of enforcement particularly effective. When no clear list exists of what is and isn't prohibited, booksellers, publishers, and readers are left to guess. And when the penalty for guessing wrong is a potential 7 to 10 years in prison, the rational response is to self-censor — to pull anything that might, conceivably, be considered problematic. The law doesn't need to be applied broadly to have a broad effect. Uncertainty does the work.

This dynamic is not unique to Hong Kong. Scholars of authoritarian information control have long noted that vague prohibitions are often more effective than specific ones, precisely because they force individuals to police themselves.

For international businesses, investors, and expatriates still operating in Hong Kong, the question is no longer abstract. If a biography sold in a bookstore can constitute sedition, what else might? A news article shared internally? A presentation that references a banned figure? The legal perimeter is expanding, and its edges are deliberately blurry.