Freedom continues to deteriorate in Hong Kong as the Chinese regime tightens its grip on the global financial hub, “directly threatening U.S. interests” in the city, the State Department said in the annual report released on March 31. “Over the past year, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has continued to dismantle Hong Kong’s democratic institutions, placed unprecedented pressure on the judiciary, and stifled academic, cultural, and press freedoms,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “As the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to Beijing approaches, Hong Kong’s freedoms are diminishing,” Blinken said. For the third year in a row, Blinken reaffirmed in the report that the worsening condition in the former British colony “does not warrant” the special treatment it had enjoyed under U.S. law. The communist regime in Beijing eliminated the ability of pro-democracy opposition parties to participate in Hong Kong’s governance and criminalized peaceful …