It’s been illuminating seeing the hong kong public library « harmonized » after the national security law. No books criticizing the cpp are allowed nowadays.

You won’t find cartoons by Zunzi anymore nor will you find back issues of Apple Daily. The entire political history of hong kong as recorded by published media has been sanitized to ensure that the overly sensitive overlords find nothing that might prick their ego.

So it doesn’t matter if the public library is a nice space with good architecture and a comfortable reading space. If only the official sanctioned viewpoints are available then it fails at the real objective of libraries: To allow people to enrich their mind by giving them multiple viewpoints so that they may forge their own opinions.