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The recent prosecutions [of independent book sellers in Hong Kong] 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.

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The censure of independent bookstores – together with the assemblage of other measures taken to advance one sense of Hong Kong society, identity, history, and culture – are part of a larger campaign to re-align Hong Kong’s “hearts and souls.” The governments of Hong Kong and China appear determined to give only one option to Hong Kongers: to remember their “Chinese heart” and fall in line in a new society under the auspices of national security, where the only way forward is the one offered by the government.

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