Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

How Pope Francis opened the Vatican to transgender sex workers

Israel shuts down Al Jazeera’s operations, raids Jerusalem office

Hamas attacks border crossing, killing 3, as Gaza cease-fire talks drag on

A frank look at hot dog prices at MLB ballparks

Sloppy first inning dooms the Nationals in a 6-3 loss to the Blue Jays

In a pinch, the Nationals finally find some offense

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

There’s still time for Congress to Trump-proof the Insurrection Act 

The Post endorses April McClain Delaney and Tom Royals for Maryland’s 6th District

On Press Freedom Day, little to celebrate for Hong Kong’s journalists

The new cure-all for vacation excess: the IV drip 

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

You asked: Do I need a passport for my cruise?

In photos: The 150th running of the Kentucky Derby

Bodies found in Mexico where 3 tourists went missing

Protesters clash with law enforcement at U-Va.

The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden

The ‘Access Hollywood’ video cemented Trump’s air of invincibility

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

Top RNC lawyer resigns after rift grows with Trump

Trump escalates attacks on prosecutors, says Democrats run ‘a Gestapo administration’

Divided Trump campaign weighs joining TikTok, the app he tried to ban

Twitch streamers become go-to news source for campus protest coverage

After years of delay, Boeing to try again with Starliner space capsule

Ask Amy: I live with my boyfriend – and his sister and her family

Carolyn Hax: Working for a celebrity has this employee feeling ‘small’

Carolyn Hax: Longtime friend won’t forgive being last-minute canceled for a guy

Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions to know? <a href="http://wapo.st/2ipDWPS">Sign up for the Today's WorldView newsletter</a>.

It has been a week since the death of Liu Xiaobo, the famed Chinese dissident who was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Peace while imprisoned.

Late last month, Chinese officials announced that the prominent writer, who had been detained since 2009, was being moved to a hospital to receive treatment for late-stage liver cancer. Despite the entreaties of his family, friends and foreign governments, Beijing refused to release him to seek care overseas. He died July 13, becoming only the second Nobel laureate to perish in custody (Carl von Ossietzky, an anti-Nazi pacifist, died in 1938).

In a move that sparked the ire of Chinese activists, authorities apparently ensured that his ashes were buried at sea and not on Chinese soil. Acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei, who lives in Germany, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-aiweiwei-idUSKBN19Y1ZW?il=0">said</a> the move was aimed at denying Liu’s supporters “a physical memorial site” and that it “showed brutal society can be.”

“It is a play,” said Ai. “Sad but real.”

Indeed, for China’s authoritarian leadership, what Liu represents is all too real. The poet and essayist was admired by many among the Chinese diaspora and the international community. “He fought for freedom and democracy for more than 30 years, becoming a monument to morality and justice and a source of inspiration,” Wen Kejian, a fellow writer, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-nobel-laureate-liu-xiaobo-called-a-monument-to-morality/2017/07/13/bde11b7a-6770-11e7-83d7-7a628c56bde7_story.html?utm_term=.653eeb65566d">told</a> my colleague Emily Rauhala.

“Liu Xiaobo was a representative of ideas that resonate with millions of people all over the world, even in China. These ideas cannot be imprisoned and will never die,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-nobel-laureate-liu-xiaobo-called-a-monument-to-morality/2017/07/13/bde11b7a-6770-11e7-83d7-7a628c56bde7_story.html?utm_term=.f360a9b9209f">said</a> Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in a statement.

Ironically Liu’s legacy and oeuvre are more visible abroad than at home, where even Internet searches of his name are censored and tributes to his life were <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b6d56066-6847-11e7-8526-7b38dcaef614">hurriedly erased from social media</a>.

But what further underscores the tragedy of his life was the nature of his politics. Liu was not calling for radical change or an overthrow of the regime. The putative reason for his 2009 imprisonment was <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/liu-xiaobo-and-the-meaning-of-chinese-patriotism">his co-authorship of “Charter 08,”</a> a manifesto calling for reform and greater freedom of expression within the Chinese system.

“Inevitably, some in the West will think that honoring Liu Xiaobo is an act of offense against China (or, more practically, a potential risk to relationships with the government). That’s a mistake,” <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-unbroken-liu-xiaobo">wrote Evan Osnos</a>, author of the National Book Award-winning “<a href="http://aax-us-east.amazon-adsystem.com/x/c/Qv0Ck-8ptOwbqSPlMsD16UcAAAFdYkoRkAEAAAFKASrnrNU/https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth/dp/0374535272/ref=as_at/?linkCode=w50&amp;tag=thneyo0f-20&amp;imprToken=B9SkHYD9CcRzb65UJothug&amp;slotNum=0&amp;s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1489606975&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Age+of+Ambition%3A+Chasing+Fortune%2C+Truth%2C+and+Faith+in+the+New+China">Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China</a>.” “Honoring Liu is an act of dedication to China at its best. He was, to the end, unwilling to renounce his principled commitment to China’s constitution — to the freedoms enshrined in law but unprotected in practice.”

Osnos also offered an anecdote from when he met Liu: “If you never had a chance to meet him, it was easy to misread him as a cynic. On the contrary, in person, Liu could be unnervingly optimistic. On that day when I met him, in 2007, at a teahouse near his apartment, he told me that as China became stronger and more connected to the world, he imagined that the ‘current regime might become more confident.’ He went on, ‘It might become milder, more flexible, more open.’ In that prediction, he was, for now, wrong, and he paid with his life.”

“Although the regime of the post-Mao era is still a dictatorship, it is no longer fanatical but rather a rational dictatorship that has become increasingly adept at calculating its interests,” Liu <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bd978dc8-6c59-11e7-b9c7-15af748b60d0?mhq5j=e3">once said in 2006</a>, in another illustration of his optimism about the capacity for change.

“In calculating those interests, the regime has decided that it was safer to turn Liu into a martyr than to allow his ideas to spread unchallenged,” <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bd978dc8-6c59-11e7-b9c7-15af748b60d0?mhq5j=e3">wrote Jamil Anderlini of the Financial Times</a>. “This conclusion is probably correct in the short term. Thanks to the party’s efforts, the vast majority of Chinese people have never heard of Liu and most of those who have heard of him think he was a hopeless troublemaker. His death will not spark a revolution.”

Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, the invasive, authoritarian control of the ruling government has expanded, while the space for civil society has contracted. Dissent and critical expression have been chilled, and it seems increasingly clear that Chinese officials aren’t bothered by censure from abroad.

“What is really important isn’t so much that the party is tightening its control — that is happening anyway,” <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/china-liu-xiaobo-and-new-reality-human-rights">noted Steve Tsang of the Chatham House</a> think tank in London. “What is more important is that the party is not that worried about how the Liu Xiaobo case affects international opinion.” A budding global hegemon, China can withstand the clucking of outside powers over its human rights record.

It also doesn’t help that there is an American president who has explicitly argued against fighting for universal values and rights elsewhere. On the day of Liu’s death, President Trump happened to hail his Chinese counterpart Xi as a “terrific” and “talented” leader.

“It is especially shameful that Donald Trump praised Xi Jinping at the moment when Liu Xiaobo was dying,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/14/death-of-liu-xiaobo-activists-scorn-trump-for-hailing-terrific-xi">said</a> Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer living in exile in the United States. “Xi Jinping is not a respectable leader. He is a brutal dictator.”

“Western countries have adopted a policy of appeasement,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/world/asia/liu-xiaobo-nobel-peace-prize-china-democracy.html">said</a> Hu Jia, a prominent dissident who served more than three years in prison, to the New York Times. “The Communist Party has the resources to whip whomever they want.”

Hu, who still faces regular surveillance from police, offered an ominous warning: “Some have turned to believe in violent revolution. It makes people feel the door to a peaceful transition has closed.”

Arthur Ross Media Award in Commentary, 2021

Yale University, BA, honors in history and ethnicity, race and migration

Ishaan Tharoor is a foreign affairs columnist at The Washington Post, where he authors the Today's WorldView newsletter and column. In 2021, he won the Arthur Ross Media Award in Commentary from the American Academy of Diplomacy. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.

Ishaan Tharoor

The Washington Post

War In Ukraine

Africa

Americas

Asia

Europe

Middle East

World

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/world/&limit=20

The Washington Post World section provides information and analysis of breaking world news stories. In addition to our world news and video, Post World News offers discussions and blogs on major international news and economic issues.