Chen Guangcheng and the Crisis of U.S.-China Relations

From the Wall Street Journal, "Mistakes and Mixed Signals As China Drama Unfolded" (via Google):

Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese legal activist, arrived smiling at Chaoyang Hospital, a sprawling redbrick complex, on Wednesday afternoon. It was supposed to be a triumphant resolution to the diplomatic crisis that started six days earlier when Mr. Chen sought protection in the U.S. embassy, a precursor to a new life studying law in China.

U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke stayed for 90 minutes and met with Mr. Chen's wife and children, who had sped to Beijing on a high-speed train.

Then, as darkness fell, a growing number of police arrived at the ninth-floor corridor. They took video of visiting journalists before jostling them into elevators. At 6:30 p.m., hospital staff asked the remaining U.S. officials to leave. They said visiting hours were over.

Suddenly, the people who had protected Mr. Chen were gone.

That development helped send the activist into a panic, precipitating a crisis that derailed the agreement, prompted days of confusion and recrimination, and cast a pall over U.S.-Chinese relations.

Around 9 p.m., Mr. Chen told a friend by phone the hospital had given the family nothing to eat. Others phoned and one friend urged him to reject the deal. Mr. Chen told callers he had been coerced to leave the embassy and was worried for his family's safety. He tried calling two embassy officials around 10 p.m. Neither answered.

The Chen saga, based on interviews with government officials, activists and others in the negotiations, began with the promise that American relations with China had entered a new, mature phase. It ended demonstrating how much distance and suspicion remain between the two powers.

Friday, both sides appeared close to a fresh deal that would bring Mr. Chen and his family to the U.S., probably to study law at New York University. With final details not yet signed, U.S. officials said they were confident the deal would work out. Some analysts saw the quick agreement as a sign the bilateral relationship was resilient. The damage, however, especially from that Wednesday night at the hospital, had already been done.

U.S. officials, in their rush to complete negotiations Wednesday before a separate set of high-level U.S.-China talks was set to begin, appeared to have misjudged Mr. Chen's fragile emotional condition.

The self-taught activist had spent four years in jail—on trumped-up charges, critics say—and 19 more months in home detention, where he says he endured periodic beatings, before his dramatic dash to the embassy.

The days were filled with missed calls and dropped connections that might have changed the trajectory of events.

It's also possible the U.S., in negotiating with China's foreign ministry, overlooked the country's competing power centers jockeying for position. The foreign ministry has traditionally carried little clout in the Chinese power structure, and analysts say the fate of Mr. Chen was almost certainly decided by top Communist Party leaders. Mr. Chen seemed worried mostly about his fate at the hands of China's security services and provincial officials.

U.S. officials, for their part, felt Mr. Chen turned on them after hours of negotiations, one calling him "self absorbed." Mr. Locke, the U.S. ambassador, complained about the activist's change of heart, according to a senior administration official who spoke with him. Mr. Locke "feels like the guy is unfairly attacking the U.S.," the official said.

Mr. Chen rose to prominence in activist circles as a critic of forced abortions and sterilizations in his home province under China's one-child policy. His campaign led to the firing of local officials and brought about his run-in with authorities.

There's more at that top link.

And see this must-read report from Walter Russell Mead, "China Syndrome":

The Chen case encapsulates the struggle between the two wings of the Chinese establishment. Chen has been persecuted by brutal and unaccountable local officials; in the past, his activism has led the central government to punish local officials who violated written Chinese law in their sterilization and abortion efforts.

By threatening Chen and family, the hardliners are using their strengths — a network of officials, security types and powerful economic interests — to demonstrate that the modernizers are not really in charge of things in China and can’t speak for the country. They control the ground, they are saying, the real life of the country. The modernizers are up in the clouds somewhere. Chen, they have pointed out to the activist and his family, will have to live on the ground; he can’t stay up in the clouds forever.

Chen, with an 80 year old widowed mother being beaten by security forces and watched by guards wherever she goes, and with a wife and children exposed to their power, knows that the stakes in this case are so high for China’s local fiefs and Party hacks that they will do literally anything to him and his family to make their point. He knows very well how unscrupulous they are; they have apparently convinced him that the central government cannot or will not protect him.

Chen is an extremely intelligent man and his dedication and courage are genuinely awe inspiring. But he has not spent much time at the center of high profile international negotiations. A life of uncertainty and restraint punctuated by beatings was followed by an escape in which, among other things, this blind man wandered over unfamiliar land, falling, he says, more than 200 times. From there he fell into the center of a high profile diplomatic maelstrom in which some of the world’s most experienced negotiators were handling his case. One suspects things moved faster than he was ready to handle — he is a man accustomed to lots of time to reflect. Life in prison moves slowly; in the boondocks people have time to think about their big life decisions. You do things slowly and reflectively.

In the US embassy in Beijing, Chen was a fish out of water. He was with people he didn’t know well; there are large cultural gaps — and no time to work them out slowly. Since then, he appears to have had some severe shocks, and it is deep, sincere and well grounded fear that now moves him to speak as he does.

The hardliners took some heavy blows after Wang Lijun entered the American consulate in Chengdu. They are out for revenge now after Chen’s arrival in our embassy in Beijing. The next few days will tell us whether they will succeed.