President Obama on Monday gently prodded China to improve its human-rights record but pointedly declined to discuss the case of a prominent Chinese lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, now said to be under American protection in Beijing. His remarks highlighted the delicacy of an unfolding diplomatic dispute that analysts say may prove fiendishly difficult to resolve.
Both countries appear eager to avoid a standoff that threatens to mar relations and, most immediately, to eclipse annual talks scheduled to begin in Beijing on Thursday. But Mr. Chen’s professed desire to remain in China could result in a prolonged stalemate that undercuts cooperation on other global security issues.
“Chinese leaders face a huge headache right now,” said one Chinese
academic at a government research institute in Beijing. “I don’t see any
easy way out of this mess.”
With senior American diplomats descending on Beijing in hopes of quietly
negotiating a resolution, Mr. Obama said that he was “very pleased”
with the cooperation his administration had fostered between the United
States and China, reflecting a balance he has long sought between
partnership and concern over China’s restrictions on basic freedoms.
Mr. Chen’s daring escape from house arrest last week has badly strained
that balance, with advocates, lawmakers and his presumptive challenger
calling on the administration to do everything possible to protect Mr.
Chen, his family members and others who helped him and now appear to
have been arrested.
Responding to criticism that the administration had not pushed China
forcefully enough on Mr. Chen’s case, Mr. Obama said that “every time we
meet with China the issue of human rights comes up,” though he refused
to discuss the matter at all.
“It is our belief that not only is that the right thing to do, because
it comports with our belief in freedom and human rights, but also
because we actually think China will be stronger as it opens up and
liberalizes its own system,” Mr. Obama said as he appeared at the White
House with Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda. “We want China to be
strong, and we want it to be prosperous.”
The handling of Mr. Chen’s fate is so sensitive that American officials
and diplomats have refused even to confirm whether Mr. Chen is inside
the embassy, as supporters and Chinese officials have said, or somewhere
else in American hands. Mr. Obama went so far as to decline to discuss
what he called “press reports” about Mr. Chen’s case.
Administration officials have made clear they hoped silence on the
matter was the best chance to resolve the case, given the embarrassment
Mr. Chen’s escape has already caused Chinese leaders, who bristle at
anything they perceive as foreign interference.
Mr. Chen, in a videotaped appeal to Premier Wen Jiabao, outlined his
preferred solution: a deal that would allow him to be free and guarantee
that he and his family are protected from the persecution that prompted
his flight from a severe and extralegal house arrest.
Mr. Chen’s supporters say he does not want the one thing American
officials may be able to provide him — asylum — because he knows his
influence will quickly diminish to the people who matter most to him if
he leaves China.
China’s leaders, however, are unlikely to allow Mr. Chen, a blind lawyer
who became a media-savvy advocate, to have the freedom to continue his
crusading legal defense work. Any major concession on such a sensitive
internal affair seems especially unlikely during China’s
once-in-a-decade leadership succession process, now under way.
For the White House, handing Mr. Chen back over to Chinese authorities
would leave it vulnerable to election-year criticism that it had
abandoned him. “This administration has made a calculated decision not
to challenge the Chinese regime on its dismal human-rights record,” the
Republican chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, said in a statement after
Mr. Obama’s remarks. “This is an opportunity to correct that mistake.”
Source: New York Times
Source: New York Times