BEIJING - Local and overseas activists said Saturday, April 28, that the U.S. and Chinese governments were locked in delicate diplomatic negotiations over the fate of Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer who fled from house arrest last Sunday and is thought to be in Beijing under U.S. protection.
Those negotiations could be complicated by what activists in Beijing say is the dissident's desire not to seek political asylum in the United States but to remain in China to continue his campaign for democratic rights and the rule of law.
"He believes that China is in a period of intensive changes now, and it's not far away from the final fundamental change," said Hu Jia, a Beijing activist who said he met with Chen on Wednesday. "He told me he didn't want to ask for political asylum in the U.S. Instead, he wants to 'stay in this land and continue to fight.' "
U.S. foreign policy experts said that would put the United States in an unenviable diplomatic position on the eve of annual meetings on strategic and economic matters. They noted that although American diplomats have repeatedly urged senior Chinese officials to end abusive treatment of Chen, the Obama administration would not want to be drawn into negotiating the terms of Chen's living conditions in China, which Chinese officials would likely see as interference in their internal affairs.
At the same time, experts said, U.S. diplomats do not want to see Chen leave the embassy if he is going to be detained
again, an outcome that would set off an uproar in the international human rights community. As it is, several of the people who say they helped Chen during his escape have been detained, activists said Saturday."This is a pivotal moment for U.S. human rights diplomacy," Bob Fu, president of the Texas-based Christian human rights group ChinaAid, said in a statement. "Because of Chen's wide popularity, the Obama administration must stand firmly with him or risk losing credibility as a defender of freedom and the rule of law. If there is a reason why Chinese dissidents revere the U.S., it is for a moment like this."
Frank Jannuzi, head of Amnesty International's Washington office, said that the past mistreatment of Chen suggests that he should not be handed back without a Chinese government commitment to respect his rights. He added: "Whether he wants to leave the country should be a choice he makes, not one forced upon him by the U.S. government or Chinese government."
"This is one of those issues where there literally are no good options," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and former senior director for Asia on the National Security Council. "There is just no good way to manage this. I don't envy the people in State and the White House who have to figure out how to walk the line on this one."
With Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner due in Beijing on Tuesday for talks, Lieberthal said that "the best that can happen here is we negotiate an early departure from China" for Chen.
Yet some China experts say that Chen poses an unusual test for the country's central government. Unlike many other political dissidents, Chen has not been convicted of a crime other than obstructing traffic, and he already completed his lengthy sentence for that. Since then, he has been held by what he described in a video this week as a group of local police and thugs who have beaten him and his wife and prevented visitors from seeing him.
"There is a really, really outside chance that the central Chinese authorities would take this opportunity to ride in on a white horse and clean this up and say they were defending the rule of law. But it is unlikely," Lieberthal said. "At the end of the day, he is going to have to leave China or leave the embassy and see what he faces."
Chen's escape and the possible involvement of the U.S. Embassy in sheltering him come at an already challenging time for China's Communist rulers, who are grappling with the gravest political crisis here since the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989. The firing of and investigation into once-rising star Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing party secretary, and the arrest of Bo's wife on suspicion of murder have exposed high-level corruption and leadership rifts just months ahead of what was supposed to be a carefully choreographed handover of power this fall.
The Chen case could push human rights issues to the forefront of this week's talks, which are supposed to focus on issues such as trade, currency appreciation, Iran sanctions and North Korea.
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