Two Systems, Two Countries Quotes

“A comparative analysis of lived political experiences of colonization and ostensible noncolonization may then facilitate moving beyond simplistic labeling and attendant moralizing, or perhaps beyond simplistic moralizing and attendant labeling. If we consider Hong Kong’s history exclusively through its binary relationship with the United Kingdom, there were undoubtedly grave injustices in the colonial era that no reasonable person can deny: the ban on people of Chinese descent living on the Peak, or the long-standing failure to implement full democracy.201 Yet such a perspective fails to explain why people in China proactively chose to flee their homes to move to a colonial state and willingly become colonial subjects, nor does it explain the widespread feeling of anxiety about the end of British rule in the 1980s and 1990s.”
― Kevin Carrico, Two Systems, Two Countries: A Nationalist Guide to Hong Kong

“If a “colonialism bad” perspective cannot represent the full complexity of Hong Kong’s history, returnists also argue that a counterdiscourse describing Chinese rule as “colonial” makes the mistake of flattening distinct colonial regimes under a single descriptor. Returnists see the former remote metropole of London facilitating the expansion of freedom, rights, and rule of law in the city, while also taking an increasingly hands-off approach to the management of local affairs over the course of the colony’s history. Returnists then contrast this model of rule with that of another considerably more proximal metropole, joined by an assumed racial-cultural link, which has only ever taken an increasingly interventionist and controlling approach against the liberalizing trends fostered by the former. The point here is that the Chinese colonization of Hong Kong is not simply a “continuation” of the pre-1997 colonial situation, as a singular discourse of colonization would suggest. Rather, these are two vastly different colonial metropoles, and a significant part of the problem with Chinese colonization in the eyes of returnists is precisely that China has not continued the United Kingdom’s colonial style.”
― Kevin Carrico, Two Systems, Two Countries: A Nationalist Guide to Hong Kong