HONG KONG -- He was grabbed by Chinese police, convicted of spying for Taiwan, and sent back to his home in China. Then he did something that ordinarily would have landed him back in deep trouble: he published his story in the press.
Why could Li Shaomin get away with it? Because the part of China where he lives is Hong Kong, and the episode is seen by many as a sign that four years after switching from British to Chinese sovereignty, the tiny territory's freedoms remain intact.
The handling of Li's case since his return, along with other important recent decisions, are being cited by some as triumphs for the "one country, two systems" arrangement set up to preserve Hong Kong's capitalist way of life.
A State Department report to Congress, released by the U.S. consulate on Wednesday, cited Li's return as one of many signs that Hong Kong remains "one of the freest cities in Asia."
Lawmaker Martin Lee, head of the political opposition and an outspoken critic of Hong Kong's government, said it "shows that Beijing obviously sees the advantage of showing the whole world that Hong Kong should be treated separately. This is what 'one country, two systems' is all about."
The mere fact that Hong Kong's 6.6 million people have a legal, elected political opposition sets them apart from the communist mainland.
It's also noteworthy that Li, a U.S. scholar, was immediately given back his job as a professor of marketing at Hong Kong's City University. The decision by the college's executive council was unanimous.
"The international community could not ask for more positive proof than this that Hong Kong's autonomy is in good working order," said the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's leading English-language daily.
Hong Kong needs the reassurance. As its 1997 return to Chinese control loomed, there were widespread fears that its freedoms would wither under a communist sovereign.
These fears were reinforced two years ago when Hong Kong's semiautonomous government called in Beijing to overturn a Hong Kong court's ruling on an immigration case, and later when the same government refused entry to 100 members of the Falun Gong spiritual group.
Last month, however, Hong Kong's highest court again overruled the Hong Kong government on an immigration case, and this time the government did not ask Beijing to intervene.
As for Falun Gong, Hong Kong officials continue to criticize it harshly, but have quashed speculation that they would follow China's lead and outlaw the movement.
Tung Chee-hwa, chief executive of Hong Kong's semiautonomous government, and other senior officials, say these recent decisions are their own, although many believe they got Beijing's approval.
The one shadow over the general satisfaction at Li Shaomin's return was that the professor was held at Hong Kong's airport for five hours.
Many commentators have suggested immigration officials kept him there while they consulted higher powers about whether to let him in.
"I don't think they needed five hours to complete immigration proceedings," said Wu Guogang, a professor of politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Regardless of what went on behind the scenes, the affair highlights Hong Kong's place as a haven for a few Chinese scholars and dissidents, many of whom have also suffered imprisonment in the mainland.
Here, thanks to Beijing's hands-off policy, people like Li and his father, prominent liberal thinker Li Honglin, can live and express themselves freely.
"It is true that I don't like China's political system. I'm actually very critical of it," the younger Li wrote in his account, published Wednesday in the Hong Kong newspaper iMail, The Asian Wall Street Journal and elsewhere.
The elder Li, 76, is a former adviser to Hu Yaobang, the late Communist Party reformist leader.
He spent 10 months in jail after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre for sympathizing with pro-democracy student protesters.
"As the interrogators mentioned, my family has a 'counterrevolutionary' history," his son wrote. But he added, "I am not a spy."
Li is one of three overseas-based scholars seized recently while visiting China, convicted of spying for Taiwan and expelled.
A fourth, Chinese-born American writer Wu Jianmin, remains in prison awaiting trial.