The loss of the country’s most prominent dissident, Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who died of cancer under police guard at a Shenyang hospital on Thursday, leaves China’s fractured activist community at its weakest in a generation – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
The death on Thursday of China’s most prominent political prisoner, Liu Xiaobo, set off a frenzied effort by government censors to block discussion of his legacy online. – New York Times
China’s economic might is catching up to the United States — or is seen to be catching up. That’s according to a new report from the Pew Research Center, which released results of a 38-nation survey Thursday afternoon. While the majority of those polled still correctly believe the United States is the world’s biggest economy, 12 nations — including Canada, Russia, and most of western Europe — believe China has the largest economy in the world. – Foreign Policy’s The Cable
Friends of China's Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident Liu Xiaobo, who died of liver cancer in custody, said on Friday they were unable to contact his widow, Liu Xia, and that ensuring her freedom was now a top priority. - Reuters
Analysis: Mr. Liu’s fate reflects how human rights issues have receded in Western diplomacy with China. And it shows how Chinese Communist Party leaders, running a strong state bristling with security powers, can disdain foreign pleas, even for a man near death. – New York Times
Editorial: Shortly before Mr. Liu died, the man ultimately responsible for this and so many other abuses in China, President Xi Jinping, was basking in the glamour and glory of international politics at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg. Yet throughout Mr. Xi’s rule, the true locus of honor in China has been any place of confinement occupied by Liu Xiaobo. – Washington Post
Editorial: Without political reform, China will continue to use its growing economic and military clout to spread its authoritarian model. Pressuring Beijing to free the imprisoned human-rights lawyers who have taken up Liu’s freedom fight would serve the interest of China’s people, as well as the rules-based international order that its undemocratic government seeks to subvert. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Editorial: Liu Xiaobo was, in a sense, the leader of China. He was the country’s foremost proponent of freedom, democracy, and human rights. He thought that Communism was a gross imposition on China and that it could not last indefinitely, if enough Chinese stood up against it. – The Weekly Standard
FPI Senior Fellow Ellen Bork writes: Today, we are discovering that America’s posture of uncritical engagement has far-reaching consequences. China is not only crushing democracy at home but challenging the universal rights and liberal democratic norms and universal abroad. A response to this will not come from the White House. Just hours after Liu died, President Trump praised Xi Jinping as a “terrific guy” at a press conference in Paris. Liu cannot comment on Xi’s ascendancy, and the attendant U.S. retreat. But we still have his writings to guide us. “Tyranny is not terrifying,” he wrote in 1996, “what is really scary is submission, silence, and even praise for tyranny.” – The Weekly Standard
Xiaorong Li writes: Liu Xiaobo never harbored the illusion that nonviolent action would not be returned by violence. Chinese lawyers who used the courts to challenge the state-controlled judiciary, attempting to hold the police accountable for using torture to extract confessions or keeping detainees in secret locations, have been detained or tortured themselves. But Xiaobo didn’t let the repression cloud his unflappable optimism. His firm belief that freedom is “the source of humanity and the mother of truth” should continue to guide all of us. – New York Times