Escape may tangle talks

Timing complicates situation on eve of key diplomatic initiatives.

BEIJING — A blind activist who escaped house arrest in his Chinese village is under the protection of American officials, supporters said Saturday, creating a diplomatic dilemma for the U.S. and Beijing days ahead of a visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Chen Guangcheng, who has exposed forced abortions and sterilizations in villages as a result of China’s one-child policy, fled from his guarded home a week ago in Shandong province in eastern China. Activists based in China say he was driven from his house by supporters and handed over to others who brought him to Beijing.

The U.S. and Chinese governments have not confirmed reports that Chen is at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which declined to comment Saturday. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, originally due in Beijing next week, arrived early today. He too did not comment to reporters.

Chinaaid Association, a Texas-based activist group that has been promoting Chen’s case, said Saturday he was in U.S. care and that Beijing and Wash- ington were discussing the situation.

Chen’s whereabouts could be a major political complication for the two countries, with Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner due to arrive in China for strategic talks that begin Thursday on global economics and topics including the violence in Sudan and maritime claims in Asia’s seas.

Chen’s case comes as the United States is looking for help from China on many issues around the world, such as trying to restrain North Korea and Iran on their nuclear ambitions, and pushing Syria to observe a cease-fire in the fighting in that country. Bilateral disputes over trade, China’s currency and U.S. relations with Taiwan are also issues that likely will be part of the strategic talks.

Chinaaid’s founder, Bob Fu, said Chen’s case was a benchmark for the United States and its human rights image around the world.

“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,” he said in a statement.

Fu and China-based activists say Chen slipped away from his closely guarded home on the night of April 22. His wife and 6-year-old daughter are still there.

Chen recorded a video as a direct address to Premier Wen Jiabao, condemning the treatment of him and his family and accusing local Communist Party officials by name. Activists sent the video Friday to the overseas Chinese news site Boxun.com, which posted part of it on Youtube.

Activist Hu Jia met with Chen after his escape and said people with Chen later called him. His wife later posted a photo of Chen and Hu together on Twitter in which the two men are smiling. Chen is wearing the same clothes seen in the video.

“They said, ‘He is in a 100 percent safe place,’” Hu said. “If they say that, I know where that place is. There’s only one 100 percent (safe) place in China, and that’s the U.S. Embassy.”

Hu’s claim could not be verified. Police detained Hu for questioning Saturday afternoon and by early today he had not been released, his wife, Zeng Jinyan, said on Twitter.

If Chen is in the U.S. Embassy or with U.S. officials at another location, it is not known how he would be able to leave or where he could go without Chinese permission.

Chen’s escape, if ultimately successful, would boost a beleaguered civil rights community, which has faced rising arrests and other harassment over the past year.

In 1989, when Fang Lizhi, whose speeches inspired student protesters throughout the 1980s, fled with his wife to the U.S. Embassy after China’s 1989 military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, he was forced to stay there for 13 months while the countries discussed his fate.

Chen’s case is more complicated because his wife and daughter are still in Shandong.

Fu said Chen’s case should be handled through negotiation, like Fang’s, and that his family should not suffer any reprisals.

“The odds are that it will be a long negotiation and a stalemate for a time,” said Jerome Cohen, a Chinese law expert at New York University. “China has some cards to play starting with Chen’s wife and children plus the accomplices to his escape.”

China’s media have been silent on the case.

HU JIA Blind Chinese fugitive Chen Guangcheng was spirited away from his well-guarded rural village last week and made it to a secret location in Beijing on Friday, supporters say. He is said to have found sanctuary, possibly at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.