• Rights advocates around the world are mourning Liu Xiaobo, China’s most prominent political prisoner and a Nobel peace laureate. He died Thursday, still silenced and under guard at a government hospital, his writings still banned.

His fate reflects how human rights issues have receded in Western diplomacy with China.

Mr. Liu, who kept vigil at Tiananmen Square in 1989 to protect protesters from soldiers and initiated the Charter 08 petition for democracy, had been jailed since 2009.

“Even if I am crushed into powder,” he wrote his wife before his trial, “I will embrace you with ashes.” She remains under house arrest.