Believe it or not, there’s one thing that’s actually gotten better in Hong Kong in the five years since China resumed control over the former British colony — the authorities’ efficiency at denying access to the territory. Slightly over two months after turning the Chinese labor camp expert and human rights activist Harry Wu around at Chep Lap Kok airport and sending him home to the United States, the Hong Kong authorities streamlined the procedure.

They rejected by fax and e-mail Mr. Wu’s application to travel to Hong Kong for a panel discussion at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club. Mr. Wu’s visit, the government told him, “was considered not in the interests” of Hong Kong. Mr. Wu, as an American, is not supposed to need a visa to visit Hong Kong.

Now, it’s easy to see why mainland China wouldn’t want Mr. Wu around. In 1956, the government jailed him for almost two decades for criticizing the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Since immigrating to the United States, he has exposed not only China’s forced labor system — known as the laogai — but also the willingness of foreign businessmen, and the World Bank, to wink at the role this system plays in China’s economy. In 1995, he was arrested (and later released) upon trying to enter mainland China to continue his research on the laogai.

Hong Kong was supposed to be different. Promised autonomy, civil liberties, a free press, an independent judiciary, and eventual democratization, it was supposed to thrive under a system Deng Xiao-ping called “one country, two systems.” However, this catchy slogan meant something entirely different to the communist cadres than it did to the international community. Slowly but surely, Hong Kong’s Beijing-appointed executive, and its legislature, controlled by Beijing sycophants, has chipped away at all of them. Blocking Mr. Wu from the Foreign Correspondents Club event is just one small instance of interference, often subtle, sometimes not, with the press. That immigration decisions are being made according to Beijing’s “interests” rather than those of a free society is undeniable.

Last year, the authorities deported over one hundred Falun Gong members upon their arrival. Banned as an “evil cult” on the mainland, it remains ostensibly legal in Hong Kong. The treatment of the Falun Gong raises tough questions about the government’s collaboration with Beijing’s security services. How did Hong Kong’s immigration service have the names of dozens of Falun Gong members from jurisdictions like Australia and even the United States? Presumably from Beijing’s overseas intelligence activities.

Soon, the Hong Kong legislature dominated by pro-Beijing parties and interests is expected to act on legislation outlawing subversion. No one knows what will constitute subversion — protesting, joining a group, or reading a newspaper. Without a democratically-elected government, extreme interpretations will be impossible to check.

Will passage of a subversion law in Hong Kong be another occasion for the international community to be “shocked, shocked” by the steady erosion of freedoms and autonomy in Hong Kong? Or will America, including its Congress, which promised to act in defense of Hong Kong’s freedoms, finally pull itself together to oppose the slow, but steady deterioration of Hong Kong’s freedoms?