Two Systems, Two Countries: A Nationalist Guide to Hong Kong by Kevin Carrico is one of the most important English-language books written on post-handover Hong Kong. Over the past decade, the rise of Hong Kong nationalism has transformed Hong Kong and its relationship with China. Carrico offers a genuinely novel approach to understanding these dramatic changes by engaging seriously with ideas of Hong Kong independence, usually simply dismissed as an impossibility. Instead, he seeks to appreciate the appeal of such impossibility arguing it “demands a complete reassessment of our understanding of Hong Kong's political reality” (p. 3).

Hong Kong's new political reality and consequences for research after the promulgation of the national security law become chillingly apparent in the introduction. Notes on the author's anthropological and textual methods are accompanied by the assurance to local contacts that all data reported are in the public record and cannot be mined by authorities for politicized prosecution. In the first chapter, “Hong Kong ethnogenesis,” Carrico examines the reasons for the post-1997 emergence of a Hong Kong nation through four theoretical frameworks. He points out the Sino-centric nature of a psychological approach, popular in the academic literature on Hong Kong nationalism, that believes in the pathological nature of Hong Kong identity. Instead, Carrico finds the idea of noncompliance cycles, originally used to analyse state–society relations in Maoist China, more useful to understand the rise of an ethnic identity due to state pressure. He is however clear that Hong Kong nationalism is more than just provocation; instead, “it is an awakening to the repressed reality of the impossibility of autonomy, democracy and freedom under Beijing's rule” (p. 31). He subsequently turns to the writings of former academic Chin Wan, who challenges the potential role of the city in China's democratization. This is complemented by the critique of the existing opposition by political commentator Lewis Loud. Both argue that Hong Kong is trapped in the unrealistic hopes of pan-democrats about democratizing China which deprioritizes Hong Kong and reinforces the hierarchical status quo. Hong Kong independence is thus “Hong Kong's political enlightenment, casting aside the burdensome mythologies of the past to image a new path forward” (p. 33).

Carrico's greatest service to the scholarly community is the in-depth and critical assessment of Hong Kong nationalism's main schools of thought, treating the abundance of innovative ideas with the academic rigour and respect they deserve. In the second chapter, he meticulously outlines the evolution of Hong Kong nationalism from Chin Wan's city-state theory to ideas of Hong Kong independence and self-determination as well as so-called returnism, the return of Hong Kong to UK sovereignty. The author successfully conveys the radicalness and unorthodoxy of Chin's Nietzschean thinking (p. 61) which gives Hong Kong “real power and agency” in its relationship with China (p. 64). Through Carrico's vivid prose we relive how Brian Leung from the Hong Kong University Student Union journal Undergrad ponders the question of membership in the Hong Kong community (p. 78). We follow the writers of the Hong Kong National Party's Comitium journal towards “the boundaries of politically acceptable speech” which “built a new foundation for reimagining Hong Kong” (p. 97). He concludes by arguing that returnism's “recolonization would in fact be an express train to independence” (p. 108) finally allowing “proper decolonization” (p. 109). The thinkers, politicians and publications covered in the chapter are not only nationalists but also self-described localists. Here a deeper discussion on the complex relationship between nationalism and localism would be helpful.

The third and final chapter “critically examines the official Chinese research on Hong Kong independence” (p. 114). Carrico begins with a fundamental challenge to Edward Said's approach to postcolonial analysis and the Orientalist understanding of identity and repression. He questions the simple Orientalist East–West binary and “Said's geographically bound approach” (p. 116). Gerd Baumann's structuralist framework provides him with the tools to analyse China's “deployments of orientalizing knowledge/power to rationalize its domination of others” (p. 118). Carrico subsequently examines “four core discourses on Hong Kong in official Chinese narratives” that explain Hong Kong independence: “Hong Kong as a child,” as “underdeveloped hysteric,” as uncivilized outlaw” and as “virus or cancer” (p. 119). He demonstrates the striking deficiencies of the Chinese take on the political situation and its sole purpose to justify Beijing's colonial rule over Hong Kong. We are thus reminded that “there was never any chance of maintaining Hong Kong's freedoms under One Country, Two Systems. Everything that they [Hong Kong's independent activists] predicted has come true” (p. 10)

Two Systems, Two Countries is written in a clear and captivating style that makes it attractive far beyond the academic community. We learn about the fascinating ways a Hong Kong nation is imaged, the extraordinary transformation of Hong Kong identity and politics since 1997, and why this happened particularly after 2011. We are also informed about Beijing's self-perception and the counternarratives to justify its treatment of dissenting voices. Carrico's book is thus essential reading for anyone interested in recent Hong Kong events and in China's global role.