Libraries in democratic Taiwan are stocking books removed from the shelves by authorities in Hong Kong, who are waging a war on politically “sensitive” content amid an ongoing crackdown on public dissent, a recent investigation by RFA Cantonese revealed.
Hong Kong’s bookstores once drew Chinese-language bibliophiles from far and wide in pursuit of some of the city’s most off-beat, salacious and politically radical writings, coupled with cute or alternative takes on art and culture.
But even before the 2020 National Security Law ushered in a crackdown on public criticism of the authorities, the Chinese government had been positioning itself to take control of the city’s main publishing imprints and bookstore chains, squeezing out dozens of independent stores as it did so.
As the political crackdown gathered momentum, libraries also made lists of books likely to run afoul of the new law, and pulled them from the shelves.
But Taiwan’s libraries now stock tens of thousands of banned books, possibly driven in part by demand from Hong Kongers living in exile there.
A recent search of the library catalog by RFA Cantonese, and interviews with experts, suggest that democratic Taiwan continues to act as a protective outlet for Hong Kong’s Cantonese culture, despite the ongoing crackdown.
A catalog search of the National Taiwan Library, Taipei City Library and Academia Sinica Library for 144 books that have been removed from libraries in Hong Kong, according to local media reports, found that 107 of the titles is now available in one of these libraries.
Among the banned titles on offer are We Were Chosen by the Times and Every Umbrella, compilations of interviews with non-prominent participants in the 2014 Umbrella Movement for fully democratic elections, now removed from the Hong Kong Central Library.
Farewell to Cynicism: the Crisis of Liberalism in Hong Kong, Parallel Space and Time I : An International Perspective Based on Locality, and Hong Kong, a Restless Homeland, a history of the city from a local perspective, once-lauded titles freely available in Hong Kong, have also found new homes in Taiwan, the catalog showed.
Readers can also choose among 17 business-related titles penned by jailed pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai, now stocked at the National Taiwan Library, Taipei City Library and Academia Sinica Library.
The Taipei City Library also houses the most extensive collection of books about the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, the 2019 Hong Kong protests and the Umbrella Movement.
Public demand
Hong Kong historian Eric Tsui told RFA Cantonese he was surprised to see some of his banned books on the shelves of libraries in Taiwan.
“The fact that you can find these books in public libraries in Taiwan, suggests that the Taiwanese public cares about Hong Kong, and that public libraries are stocking these books due to public demand,” Tsui said.
Taipei City Library Director Hung Shih-chang said the library has added an average of 1,500 to 2,000 Hong Kong publications a year in recent years.
“Hong Kong books are mainly obtained through exchange and donations, particularly donations,” Hung told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview.
Public demand and purchases are definitely also a factor.
“If the public requests Hong Kong publications that aren’t available in Taiwan, we will purchase them,” Hung said. “There may be people who have moved from Hong Kong to Taipei in recent years who want to read some books published in Hong Kong, so they may make some recommendations, and then the numbers go up a bit.”
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“One of the most important purposes of a public library is to provide information to our readers freely and to ensure fair access to all kinds of information,” he said, adding that censorship in democratic Taiwan is “very unlikely” to happen.
“We will try our best to meet the needs of diverse interests in the collection and provision of library materials.”
In this case, a service that was once provided to Hong Kongers in their own city has effectively moved offshore.
Promoting national thought
“The mission of every national public library should be to collect all the works of local citizens and become a resource for national thought, so that citizens of a place can share [ideas] with each other,” Tsui said.
“Now, because of the China factor, you are afraid of offending China and deprive Hong Kongers of their public property,” he said.
Taiwanese sociologist Jieh-min Wu said Taiwan still has memories of its recent, authoritarian past.
“A lot of books were banned during the authoritarian period [here], just as they are in Hong Kong today,” Wu said.
“Libraries removed books from the shelves, but they didn’t have a list of banned books. They just quietly removed them.”
“From my research perspective, Hong Kong is going through a similar period to martial law [in Taiwan, which ended in July 1987]; a time where there are very strict controls on political topics,” Wu told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview.
He said pro-democracy organizations in exile played an important role in “preserving information and then transmitting it back” home during the authoritarian rule of the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo.
Taiwan began a transition to democracy following the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo, in January 1988, starting with direct elections to the legislature in the early 1990s and culminating in the first direct election of the island’s president, Lee Teng-hui, in 1996.
While China insists on eventual “unification” with Taiwan -- by armed invasion if necessary -- the majority of Taiwan’s 23 million people have no wish to give up their democratic way of life to submit to Communist Party rule.
China has threatened the death penalty for supporters of Taiwan independence, while Taipei says Beijing has no jurisdiction over the actions of its citizens.
A recent public opinion poll from the Institute for National Defense and Security Research showed that 67.8% of respondents were willing to fight to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Eugene Whong