The Wall Street Journal, 1 MAy 2012

BEIJING—China has clamped down on activists and online media following the dramatic escape of a blind human-rights advocate from home imprisonment, an embarrassment for Beijing that could complicate U.S.-China relations if he is found in U.S. protective custody.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are meeting with their Chinese counterparts in Beijing on Thursday to discuss everything from economics to environmental policy.

The escape last week of Chen Guangcheng, coupled with indications on Friday that the Obama administration was considering the sale of U.S. fighter jets to Taiwan, could complicate discussions of such contentious issues as Syria and the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran.

The Obama administration dispatched Assistant Secretary of State for Asia affairs Kurt Campbell to Beijing over the weekend. The State Department declined to comment on Mr. Campbell’s trip. Congressional officials working on Asia believe the diplomat is seeking to resolve the Chen issue before the arrival of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Geithner.

China-U.S. relations could hit a tense point as speculation rises that Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng is being sheltered at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The WSJ’s Deborah Kan speaks to reporter Josh Chin about what–if any–options the U.S. has.

At least three activists were detained after the escape of Mr. Chen, who spoke out against forced abortions under China’s one-child policy. Popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo blocked use of the words “blind man” and “UA898,” reference to a United Airlines flight from Beijing to Washington that Mr. Chen was rumored aboard. News of his escape hasn’t appeared in major state-run media.

Legal activist Chen Guangcheng, left, poses with Hu Jia in a photo Mr. Hu says was taken not long after Mr. Chen’s April 22 escape.

The Chinese government appeared to be digging for details about who helped Mr. Chen escape and whether the U.S. has played any role.

Activist Hu Jia, a friend of Mr. Chen, was detained on Saturday. In an interview after his release late Sunday, he said authorities asked him when Mr. Chen met with U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke and whether he was present. Mr. Hu said the two questions “really surprised me” because they indicated that state security believed Mr. Chen was in U.S. custody.

Activists who spoke with Mr. Chen said they believed he sought U.S. protection, though his whereabouts was unclear on Sunday. The White House and the State Department declined to comment on the status of Mr. Chen or any possible U.S. role in protecting him. The Chinese government didn’t comment.

Friends of Mr. Chen said his escape from his home in the village of Dongshigu in Shandong province on April 22 was carefully planned. They said he stayed in his bedroom for weeks to fool his guards into thinking his health was poor. Then he scaled a wall at night and fled to Beijing, where he moved among safe houses. His wife and daughter were believed to remain under home confinement, his friends said.

Mr. Hu said one of the activists who helped in the escape told him Friday that Mr. Chen was in the “safest place” in Beijing—code, he explained, for the U.S. embassy. “If you ask any Chinese person where the safest place in Beijing is, they’ll all think the same thing,” he said.
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China Real Time Report: The Baffling Case of Chen Guangcheng

Sheltering Mr. Chen would present the U.S. with a dilemma. Keeping Mr. Chen at a U.S. facility could strain relations with China. Turning over Mr. Chen to Chinese authorities might subject him to harsh punishment, which could be politically damaging to the Obama administration. Mr. Chen had said he didn’t want to leave China, said activists who helped him.

“This is a no-win situation for the U.S., exacerbated by the likely tendency of some Chinese to believe that we engineered the whole thing to embarrass China’s leaders and the entire Chinese nation,” said Richard Bush, director for Northeast Asian policy studies at the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Obama’s top counterterrorism official, John Brennan, was asked Sunday on Fox News whether Mr. Obama was committed to protecting Mr. Chen. “I’m confident that the president and others within the U.S. government are going to be able to find the right way forward,” he said.

Chinese officials said this week’s Strategic and Economic Dialogue would continue. “I don’t know why a question like that would be raised,” said China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Cui Tiankai on Saturday. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Geithner are scheduled to meet with Vice Premier Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo.

The Chen incident comes at a sensitive time for both countries. Beijing’s hopes of a smooth leadership change later this year have been dashed by the March ouster of Bo Xilai from senior posts in the Communist Party. President Barack Obama, facing a re-election campaign, is under pressure from Republicans to take a tougher stance in dealings with China. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Sunday urged the White House to offer protection to Mr. Chen and his family.

China broke off military-to-military talks with the U.S. in 2010 after the U.S. decided to sell up to $6.4 billion in arms to Taiwan, which has de facto independence, but which Beijing considers part of China. Last year, the U.S. decided to upgrade Taiwan’s existing F-16 jets rather than selling it new ones.

In a letter Friday to Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), who has pressed the administration on Taiwan weapons sales, a White House official said the U.S. would give “serious consideration” to selling new F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said the letter “is consistent with our current policy on Taiwan, which has not changed.”

U.S. officials acknowledged this weekend that the Taiwan arms issue could emerge as an irritant to U.S.-China relations. The Pentagon and State Department had spent a year trying to repair military ties with Beijing. “The timing isn’t great for this,” said a U.S. official.

Mr. Chen, who over the years helped mount legal challenges against forced abortions in China, spent about four years in prison on charges of disturbing public order. After his release in September 2010, he and his wife were confined to their house without formal arrest or charges, watched over by a rotating cast of plainclothes guards, friends said. Their young daughter recently has been allowed to attend school, escorted to and from the house by guards.

Mr. Hu, the activist, said Mr. Chen suffered a leg injury during his escape while climbing over a wall around his home. He struggled for 20 hours to reach a rendezvous point, where volunteers picked him up and drove him to Beijing, moving him from safe house to safe house, Mr. Hu said.

Two of the activists involved in helping Mr. Chen escape—He Peirong and Guo Yushan—are missing and believed held by authorities, other activists said.

On Sunday night, Liu Weiguo, a Shandong lawyer, said he was searching for Mr. Chen’s nephew, Chen Kegui, who appeared to be fleeing from police after local officials released a statement Friday saying he had attacked them.
—Jay Solomon and William Kazer contributed
to this article.

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