For China, the United States, and the extraordinary blind dissident-lawyer Chen Guangcheng, the story is not remotely over. A first verdict on the deal that arranged his exit from the U.S. embassy will be rendered in a matter of hours, but the final one will not come for years.
After escaping from the stone farmhouse where he had lived under house arrest, Chen, on Wednesday, crossed yet another barrier—perhaps the most surprising of all—when he exited the American embassy where he had sought protection. From there, the case became confusing. State Department officials said that Chen had opted not for exile, but for life with his family elsewhere in the country; Ambassador Gary Locke accompanied him to a hospital for treatment suffered during his escape. But when the Associated Press interviewed Chen from his hospital room, Chen said that a U.S. official told him Chinese authorities would beat his wife to death if he refused to leave the American Embassy. At the hospital, Chen was clearly was out of the umbrella of American protection. Britain’s Channel 4 news quoted an interview with Chen in which he said,
Chen’s lawyer, Teng Biao, told the Washington Post that he spoke with Chen several times and Chen “felt his safety is threatened”: “In fact, from his language, I can tell that the decision to leave the is embassy was not one-hundred percent his idea.”
American officials adamantly denied that Chen did not want to leave the embassy. They released photos of him smiling with Ambassador Locke; one of the negotiators of his departure, State Department assistant secretary Kurt Campbell, said in a statement:
This is not the mood the U.S. wanted—or the mood it expected even a few hours earlier. With Hillary Clinton and Timothy Geithner set to begin strategic and economic talks Thursday, the United States had faced the diplomatic equivalent of a ticking parcel on its front step, and, from the look of it, had succeeded in defusing it. The State Department’s legal adviser, Harold Koh, and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, Kurt Campbell, worked out a deal that, we’re told, allows Chen to get medical treatment, and then move elsewhere in China with his family to enroll in a university. He was offered seven destinations, and he chose the port city of Tianjin. In a briefing, State Department officials pledged that the U.S. would monitor Chen’s case closely. “We understand that there are no remaining legal issues directed at Mr. Chen and that he will be treated like any other student in China,” one official said. “Chinese officials have further stated that they will investigate reported extralegal activities committed by local Shandong authorities against Mr. Chen and his family.” Hours later, things got complicated—and this case is likely to get thornier in the months and years ahead.
The U.S. regularly monitors dissidents in China by staying in touch, checking on relatives, reminding Chinese officials that people are paying attention to political prisoners. This arrangement, however, suggests a new level of supervision, in which the U.S. has staked its name to the safety of Chen’s family. “We were true to our values,” a U.S. official said. That may be true, bit it will be incumbent on the U.S. to maintain its vigilance —beginning with demanding fair and decent treatment for Chen’s relatives in Shandong, whose fate in the hands of authorities remains unclear. (Some reports suggested that a nephew, Chen Kegui, remains in custody.) In addition, Chen’s accomplices in his escape, including He Peirong and Guo Yushan, deserve the highest level of U.S. attention in the years ahead.
The U.S. sought to frame this as an isolated incident, and it was indeed unprecedented—but unprecedented events have a way of becoming precedents. Right now, the resolution of this case is percolating through the ranks of China’s many political dissidents, and they will take lessons from it, including whether to expect protection from America.
There are several ways to read the Chinese government’s approach. By domestic political standards, it has landed a triple lutz by allowing Chen to exit the embassy, but we don’t yet know who made the decision, how much support it enjoys, and what, exactly, that decision entails: What will happen to other dissidents who, perhaps inevitably, take this case as an example? It’s not yet clear how the Chinese government will play this to its public. At one point Wednesday, China demanded an apology from the U.S. for having “interfered in the domestic affairs of China, and the Chinese side will never accept it.” Within hours, however, Chen was out.
There is clearly some indecision, and, for the moment, an attempt to impose calm. Hillary Clinton and Timother Geithner are set to begin negotiations with China in the morning on a range of political and economic issues. In the background is the extraordinary Chen Guangcheng, in a hospital in Beijing. Now it’s time to learn more about how he got there, and where he goes next.
Photograph courtesy of U.S. Embassy Beijing Press Office/AP Photo.
