It's safe to make one forecast about the unfolding saga of Chen Guangcheng: it will not be resolved to everyone's satisfaction
Issuing predictions is a mug's game, but it's safe to make one forecast about the unfolding saga of Chen Guangcheng: it will not be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Indeed, it cannot be. Either the blind Chinese activist lawyer and his family will be hard done by, or the leadership in Beijing will have to battle the party cadres in Chen's home of Shandong, or Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will come in for huge flak from the American right for bungling a delicate bit of diplomacy (actually, that last is going to happen, no matter what). This issue has got so far out of hand that someone is going to lose out – and probably lose big.
Before turning over the various scenarios, it is worth bearing in mind a few facts. First, the true hero of this story is Chen, the 40-year-old village activist against forced abortions and other local injustices. Kept in jail for four years, then under house arrest since 2010, he escaped and sought protection 300 miles away in the US embassy in Beijing. Likewise, it is worth remembering who the true villains of the piece are. Whatever else might be said about American bungling in this case, they aren't the ones who put him in prison, confined him at home behind a two-metre high concrete wall, or beat up visitors to his house. Just who should take the blame in each case is not always evident, but the Shandong regional government has clearly been hounding a man for campaigning against violations of basic human rights.
But this is where the intricacies of the situation really make themselves felt, and where Chen's case also shows up the changing nature of global power. The only other obvious instance of a dissident being granted custody by a foreign diplomatic mission in communist China is the astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, after the Tiananmen protests. But China had far less international leverage in 1989; now it is crucial not just economically, but in dealing with Iran and Pakistan, too. For their part, the free-trading communists in Beijing are now more sensitive to international opinion than two decades ago. Both Washington and Beijing are going through a change of leaderships (in their different ways) at the moment: this affair adds to the stress. The big Sino-American event this week was meant to be the annual "strategic and economic dialogue" in Beijing.
Other Chinese dissidents have gone to America, and Chen should be supported if he wants to leave – he will certainly not be safe in Shandong anymore. But despite what some of the more overblown commentary suggests, this story is no longer about him alone. There is also his family's safety to consider – as well as those of his numerous associates and supporters who are already suffering a crackdown. The more one looks at this issue, the messier and more intractable it seems to get.