Hong Kong now holds an uneasy position in the global art world. On the one hand, it is a major hub for the international art trade: home to the Asian headquarters of global auction houses, host to a growing number of art fairs—not least Art Basel Hong Kong—and base for both local galleries and branches of major international players. This commercial vitality has been helped by the city’s duty-free status, financial infrastructure, and logistics. Government cultural policy remains minimal, largely treating art as an extension of trade and tourism, with support channelled into fairs and into the creation of M+, a flagship contemporary art museum.

Yet alongside this openness, freedom of expression has been steadily curtailed. The 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance widened the scope of sedition and subversion offences, criminalising acts across all stages of artistic creation, with penalties that in some cases stretch to life imprisonment. Definitions remain vague, enforcement inconsistent, and officials have frequently branded art as a form of “soft resistance”. While censorship bears local characteristics, it increasingly echoes the practices of the mainland.

From protest to purge

Before the 2019–2020 protests, Hong Kong’s art scene was diverse and outward-looking, even if hampered by the cost of living and limited educational investment. After the protests, however, the authorities began cleansing cultural spaces. Libraries purged books with “bad ideologies”—sometimes on the basis of the author rather than the content—museums were rehung, and public works removed.

A zero-tolerance policy on Tiananmen remembrance has since been enforced. In June 2024, performance artist Sanmu Chan was detained after silently tracing “8964” in public. In December 2021, Jens Galschiøt’s Pillar of Shame was removed from the University of Hong Kong in a late-night raid and remains in police storage.

Less visibly, artists have departed after private warnings of possible prosecution. The regular turnover of academic and arts personnel now tends to favour “safe choices” and figures deemed patriotic. Commercial organisations have also adapted, declining to support or trade works that may be judged critical of Hong Kong or Beijing, and quietly excluding pieces that present alternative views of Chinese history.

How silence works

Hong Kong’s system is less about broadcasting a single message than about cutting away dissent. Artists who avoid politics may still pursue a wide range of themes—formal experiment, introspection, ecological concerns—all of which sit comfortably within global market norms. The limits resemble those in other commercially powerful but politically constrained scenes, such as in parts of the Gulf.

Self-censorship is not only internal. Family and friends caution against taking risks. Colleagues may take you aside; dealers advise on what sells. These interventions are often well-meant. But if warnings are ignored, support networks fray. Colleagues distance themselves to protect their own positions; sponsors withdraw to avoid government scrutiny or the stigma of association.

If a questionable work does reach the public, the response can be swift. Denouncements may come from loyalist newspapers or from citizens reporting through hotlines. Police investigate for sedition or subversion. At the same time, other departments—tax, building, utilities, hygiene—may suddenly find reason to call. Artists risk isolation, as sympathy ebbs once they are seen to have deliberately courted danger.

Mainland practice: long experience, local enforcement

If Hong Kong’s censorship regime is still in formation, that of the mainland is the product of decades of experience and is far more extensive. Enforcement is mainly local: city-level authorities pre-screen exhibitions, vetting whether works “distort history”, “threaten national honour”, or risk division. With criteria left deliberately broad, one city may permit what another bans.

At the national level, censorship applies to exports as well as to exhibitions, and suspected dissent may weigh against the approval of personal travel documents. As in Hong Kong, peer pressure deters risk: professional bodies caution against crossing lines, and suspected dissent can attract scrutiny from unrelated agencies—police, tax, building inspectors—with punishments ranging from fines to detention.

The Party has long seen art as a tool of ideology. Mao Zedong’s Yan’an Talks of 1942 still hold force, and compliance is rewarded. Artists who generate “positive energy”, promote Party ideals, or align with Xi Jinping Thought can gain exhibitions, state purchases, posts, and international opportunities.

Censorship also extends into policy areas. Faced with demographic decline, the state polices representations of gender and family, suppressing LGBTQ+ portrayals and curbing narratives critical of patriarchal structures. Short videos depicting family conflict or alternative lifestyles have been removed, while state campaigns present marriage and childbirth as patriotic duties.

Still, artists describe the system as fluid rather than fixed. Works rejected at home may appear abroad—Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film was celebrated in Taiwan but banned domestically. Others reflect on constraint itself: in 2024, video artist Zhang Peili suggested that navigating censorship could be viewed as a form of “self-discipline”, since all societies impose limits.

Beyond borders

Hong Kong and mainland China increasingly project censorship overseas. Diaspora artists and writers report targeted online harassment. Chinese embassies have intervened in exhibitions abroad: in Bangkok in August 2025, an exhibition examining authoritarian regimes saw the names of Tibetan, Uyghur and Hong Kong artists erased under pressure.

Looking ahead

Hong Kong’s cultural future remains unsettled. To preserve its global trading role, the government tends to avoid overt bans, instead fostering a climate of uncertainty and fear that encourages artists and sponsors to self-police. Pressure is often applied through departments not obviously linked to culture. Yet with nationalism and Party ideology advancing in education and public life, the city’s institutions may soon be reshaped more openly. Rewards for those who “tell a good story” could become part of a mature censorship culture that increasingly mirrors the mainland.

Further reading

Extinguishing Soft Resistance: Censorship in Hong Kong (AICA, 2024 revised)

A Toolkit for Resisting Censorship (AICA)