In Crisis Over Dissident, U.S. Sends Official to Beijing
The New York Times, 29 April 2012
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration rushed to contain a growing diplomatic crisis between the United States and China, sending a senior diplomat to Beijing to discuss the fate of a blind dissident who fled house arrest last week.
Amid intense secrecy, including a nearly blanket refusal to comment, the administration sought to negotiate over the safety of the dissident, Chen Guangcheng, who is said to be in American hands in Beijing — though it remained unclear late Sunday whether he was in the embassy, in a diplomatic residence, or somewhere else.
The senior diplomat, Kurt M. Campbell, an assistant secretary of state, arrived Sunday to meet with Chinese officials concerning Mr. Chen’s case, and to try to keep the matter from undermining the administration’s longstanding effort to improve economic and security relations with China, senior officials and diplomats in Washington and Beijing said.
A senior American official said that China’s leadership met Sunday to work out their response to Mr. Chen’s escape before scheduled meetings this week with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. Mrs. Clinton is due to leave Washington for China on Monday night.
“They’re trying to figure out what they’re going to tell Hillary Clinton,” the official said of the Chinese leaders, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic delicacy surrounding the case. “We’d like to know as much as we can before she leaves.”
The administration’s effort to contain the crisis — the State Department declined to confirm that Mr. Campbell was in China, even though he was photographed in a Marriott hotel in Beijing — underscored the political challenge facing President Obama, at home and abroad.
“This is the greatest test in bilateral relations in years, probably going back to ’89,” said Christopher K. Johnson, until recently a senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, referring to the year of the crackdown on student protests in Tiananmen Square. He noted that the relationship had weathered tense moments since then, like the forced landing of a Navy spy plane on Hainan Island in 2001 after a midair encounter with a Chinese fighter jet.
Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, called for the administration to “take every measure” to protect Mr. Chen and his family. While he did not address the handling of the case, he said the matter demonstrated the need for unflinching American support for human rights in China.
“Any serious U.S. policy toward China must confront the facts of the Chinese government’s denial of political liberties, its one-child policy and other violation of human rights,” Mr. Romney said in a statement on Sunday, his first remarks on the issue since Mr. Chen’s escape was reported Friday.
Mr. Chen, 40, became famous because of his strong opposition to forced abortions and sterilizations conducted as part of China’s policy of limiting families to one child per couple. “Our country must play a strong role in urging reform in China and supporting those fighting for the freedoms we enjoy,” Mr. Romney said.
The administration’s only public comment so far on Mr. Chen’s case came from an unexpected source: Mr. Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan. Asked about the matter on “Fox News Sunday,” he declined to discuss Mr. Chen’s whereabouts in any detail, but he acknowledged that “we are working very closely with the individuals involved in this.”
He went on to say that the administration sought “an appropriate balance” when advocating for human rights in strategically important countries like China.
“I think, in all instances, the president tries to balance our commitment to human rights, making sure that the people throughout the world have the ability to express themselves freely and openly,” Mr. Brennan said, “but also that we can continue to carry out our relationships with key countries overseas.”
The two days of talks to be held in Beijing this week — known as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue — will be overshadowed by the diplomatic complications surrounding Mr. Chen’s daring escape, which took American officials by surprise. Still, both sides suggested that the talks would go ahead. In the only comment by a Chinese official so far, Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said Saturday that he did not believe the Chen case would “occupy much time” at the talks.
The meetings have been an important element of the administration’s policy to manage America’s increasingly complex relations with China through regular discussions on a wide spectrum of issues, though they were not expected to yield any specific results this week. In recent months, administration officials say they have seen signs of greater Chinese flexibility on security issues involving Iran, Syria and North Korea and on economic concerns like China’s exchange rate.
Mr. Cui’s statement did not preclude the possibility that a senior Chinese leader would meet with Mrs. Clinton separately from the planned sessions and deliver a sharp message about American involvement in Mr. Chen’s case, or a broader condemnation of American support for dissidents in China.
The Chinese government regards foreign criticism of its human rights policies and practices as undue interference in its internal affairs, and it will almost certainly use the occasion of the talks to drive that point home, diplomats in Beijing said. In fact, the Chinese might go forward with the planned talks specifically to have the chance to confront Mrs. Clinton about it.
Mr. Chen’s case is the second in recent months that has drawn the Obama administration into the affairs of the Chinese government without any intention on Washington’s part. In February a provincial official showed up at the American Consulate in Chengdu, seeking protection from a powerful party leader, Bo Xilai. The State Department instead arranged for him to be transferred to the national authorities in Beijing. Evidence that the provincial official claimed to possess apparently caused Mr. Bo’s political downfall and prompted an investigation of Mr. Bo’s wife in the killing of a British businessman.
Mr. Chen’s case is different. A self-taught lawyer, he has called attention to human rights abuses against the disabled and women who have been forcibly sterilized. In 2006 he was sentenced to 51 months in prison on charges of destroying property and assembling a crowd to disrupt traffic, charges his supporters say were trumped up.
After he was released from prison, the local authorities held him under an extralegal form of house arrest, with cordons of police officers surrounding his family’s farmhouse. In an audacious video released Friday, Mr. Chen did not call for a change of government, but rather appealed to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to investigate and halt the abuse of his family. Other advocates who have spoken to him since he fled say he does not want asylum that would force him to leave China.
That could create an opening for resolving a standoff with the United States, the officials said.
“The federal government doesn’t have to take this as a threat,” the senior American official said Sunday, noting that Mr. Chen had not escaped from official detention, but rather from harassment at the hands of the local authorities.
Mr. Chen’s supporters and Chinese officials have said that he is now in the American Embassy. More than the usual number of security vehicles, containing men in uniform and plain clothes patrolled the area near the embassy over the weekend, but there was no sign of a major security presence at the gates or entrances to the compound.
It was possible, however, that Mr. Chen was not in the fortresslike embassy, but in an apartment or some other building, and thus still vulnerable to arrest, diplomats in Beijing said. That could explain the administration’s refusal to discuss his case or his precise whereabouts.
Officials in Washington and Beijing refused Sunday to talk about Mr. Campbell’s mission or any negotiations he may be conducting. The senior American official said that much remained unclear, including China’s response to what has become a major embarrassment to Beijing. “It’s not something that’s going to be resolved quickly,” the official said.