By JOSH CHIN And PAUL MOZUR
BEIJINGâ€"The Chinese government clamped down on activists and online media in the wake of the dramatic escape of a blind human-rights advocate from home imprisonment, an embarrassing development for Beijing that could complicate U.S.-China relations if he is found to be in U.S. protective custody.
At least three activists were detained following the escape last week of Chen Guangcheng, a legal advocate who has fought forced abortions under China's one-child policy.
Meanwhile, popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo blocked use of the words "blind man" and "UA898," a United Airlines flight from Beijing to Washington that Mr. Chen was rumored to have taken out of China. News of his escape hasn't appeared in major state-run media.
Chinese officials appeared to be digging for details of Mr. Chen's escape from his home in the village of Dongshigu in Shandong province on April 22, which friends said was a carefully planned effort in which Mr. Chen scaled a wall at night, confined himself to his bedroom for weeks to fool his guards into thinking his health was poor and moved among safe houses once in Beijing. Mr. Chen escaped alone, and his wife and daughter are believed to still be under home confinement, his friends say.
One activist and friend of Mr. Chen who was detained Saturday, AIDS and environmental advocate Hu Jia, said in an interview after his release late Sunday that authorities asked him when Mr. Chen met with U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke and whether he was present. The two questions "really surprised me," because they indicated that state security believed Mr. Chen was in U.S. custody, he said.
Mr. Hu added that investigators also asked specific questions about who helped Mr. Chen escape and when certain events took place.
Activists who have spoken with Mr. Chen say they believe he sought out U.S. protection, though his whereabouts were unclear on Sunday. Neither the White House nor the U.S. State Department would confirm that the U.S. was protecting Mr. Chen in Beijing.
The Chinese government didn't comment.
Mr. Locke has found himself the focal point of China human-rights issues in the past. In January, he told television interviewer Charlie Rose that "the human-rights climate has always ebbed and flowed in China, up and down, but we seem to be in a down period and it's getting worse," earning a rebuke from the Chinese government. Earlier this month, Mr. Locke released a statement calling for the release of Ni Yulan, a property activist sentenced to two years and eight months in prison by a Beijing court on April 10 for fraud and "creating a disturbance."
The episodeâ€"along with indications on Friday that the Obama administration is reconsidering the sale of U.S. fighter jets to Taiwanâ€"could complicate efforts to solve a number of contentious issues between the U.S. and China, ranging from North Korea, Syria and Iran to economic matters such as the White House's push to improve trade relations.
They come as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are set to meet with their Chinese counterparts beginning Thursday in Beijing to discuss economic and security-related issues, and observers have hoped for some progress on issues such as military-to-military communications.
The incidents come at a sensitive time for both countries. Beijing's hopes of conducting a smooth once-a-decade leadership change beginning late this year have been dashed by the purging of Bo Xilai, once a star Communist Party leader, whose ouster in March showed deep divisions in the party's top echelons. In the U.S., President Barack Obama faces a tough re-election fight against Republicans who are pressuring him to take a tougher stance against China. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Sunday urged the White House to offer the dissident and his family protection.
Mr. Chen's escape could also be problematic for the U.S. should he be found under its care. Taking Mr. Chen out of the country or keeping him in a U.S. facility could strain relations, while handing him to Beijing would subject him to harsh punishment and could be politically damaging for the Obama administration. Mr. Chen had said he didn't want to leave China, according to activists who aided in the escape.
"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.
Chinese officials over the weekend stressed this week's Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which involves Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Geithner meeting with Vice Premier Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo, would continue as planned.
"I don't know why a question like that would be raised," said China's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Cui Tiankai in a briefing on Saturday, adding that North Korea's nuclear ambitions would likely be among agenda topics.
Experts at Chinese institutions played down or declined to comment on Mr. Chen but said the Obama administration's shifting stance on sales of fighter jets to Taiwan could hurt relations. In a Friday letter to Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas)â€"who has pressed the administration on Taiwan weapons salesâ€"a White House official said the U.S. would give "serious consideration" to selling Taiwan new F-16 fighter jets.
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said the letter "is consistent with our current policy on Taiwan, which has not changed," adding that the government wouldn't comment on future weapons sales unless Congress was formally notified. Taiwan Ministry of Defense Spokesman Luo Shao-he said the letter wasn't necessarily an assurance that the U.S. would sell weapons to Taiwan. "We happily accept anything that improves our defensive capabilities," he said.
China broke off military-to-military talks with the U.S. in January 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. The move was significant because U.S. officials increasingly worry about the threat of miscommunication as China's military might grows and it becomes more assertive in the South China Sea and elsewhere. China took less dramatic action last year when the U.S. decided to upgrade Taiwan's existing F-16s instead of selling it new ones.
If the U.S. does shift course on selling new jets to Taiwan, "China will definitely respond," said Jin Canrong, associate dean at the Center for American Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. "The U.S. and China face a trust deficit, so the foundation of the relationship already has problems," he added.
The Obama administration has tried to strike a delicate balance with China. The U.S. joined Japan and the European Union in pressing a case involving crucial industrial minerals known as rare earths before the World Trade Organization, and in his State of the Union address in January he announced a new U.S. effort targeting what he said were unfair trading practices in places like China. But the administration has also stepped up efforts to increase exports to China and has begun exploring ways to allow Chinese buyers to buy more technically advanced products under current export limits.
Mr. Chen came to prominence over the past decade as he helped mount legal challenges against forced abortions under China's one-child policy. He was released in September 2010 after about four years in prison on charges of disturbing public order, but he and his wife have since been confined to their house, watched over by a rotating cast of plainclothes guards, without formal arrest or charges. The couple's young daughter, once also confined to the house, has recently been allowed to attend school, but is escorted to and from the house by guards.
Mr. Hu, the activist, said Mr. Chen had escaped under cover of darkness by climbing over a wall erected around his home, sustaining a leg injury in the process. He had been planning the escape for months, Mr. Hu said, adding that he prepared for it by confining himself to his room for several weeks so that guards would think he was too sick to move around.
Mr. Chen 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. He said one of the activists who helped in the escape told him on Friday Mr. Chen was in the "safest place" in Beijingâ€"code, he said, 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," Mr. Hu said.
Two of the activists involved in helping Mr. Chen escapeâ€"He Peirong and Guo Yushanâ€"have also gone missing, other activists say, and were believed to be held by authorities. Activists moved on Sunday to try to protect others punished in the wake of Mr. Chen's escape.
On Sunday night, Liu Weiguo, a Shandong-based lawyer, said he was desperately searching for Mr. Chen's nephew, Chen Kegui, who appeared to be on the run from police after local officials released a statement Friday saying he had attacked them. "The local authorities are stepping up efforts to hunt down and deal with relevant parties according to the law," the statement said.
Mr. Liu said "proper arrangements" had been made for the safety of Chen Kegui's wife. He said he had no information about the status of Chen Guangcheng's wife and daughter. Mr. Chen and his wife, Yuan Weijing, had discussed escaping together, according to Mr. Hu, but Ms. Yuan decided to stay behind because she worried about aggravating injuries sustained in an earlier beating at the hands of guards and because, by staying behind, she might buy her husband more time.
In an interview, artist and Beijing critic Ai Weiwei cited the notion that both a human-rights activist and Wang Lijun, the former police chief of Chongqing, sought out U.S. protection as evidence that Chinese people across the political spectrum had lost faith in the government.
Mr. Wang was once an ally of Bo Xilai, the ousted Communist Party high-flier, and his flight in February to the protection of the U.S. consulate in the city of Chengdu began that process that led to Mr. Bo's downfall. "One is the top gun of the stability maintenance machine and the other is the victim of that machine and both of them were seeking safety with the U.S. It could not be more ironic," Mr. Ai said. "Nobody believes in the system here anymore."
â€"William Kazercontributed to this article.
No comments:
Post a Comment