China's rising authoritarianism has a stark human cost

BEIJING - Li Heping spent his career trying to hold Chinese Communist Party officials accountable for their darkest behavior. He believed in an authority higher than the party - China's legal system. And for that, he suffered tremendously.

Since the late 1990s, Li, a human rights lawyer, had defended China's most persecuted groups: dissidents, petitioners, victims of land grabs and forced demolitions, church leaders and practitioners of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong. Then came the "709" crackdown - named for July 9, 2015, the night it began - when authorities detained or interrogated more than 300 lawyers and their associates, including Li. They held Li without charge for nearly two years.

In May, they let him