U.S. should offer Chen asylum and prod China on human rights
Chinese legal activist Chen Guangchen, right, with his son, Chen Kerui, with his wife Yuan Weijing, left, in Shandong province, China. The photo was provided by the China Aid Association in April 2012. Credit: AP
The delicate negotiation taking place between the United States and China over dissident Chen Guangcheng is a sobering reminder that, despite great economic strides, China remains a repressive dictatorship.
Chen is a courageous lawyer and human rights activist renowned for his opposition to the forced abortions and sterilizations that have been a feature of his country's misguided one-child policy. Last week, after 51 months in prison followed by 19 months of house arrest, Chen escaped and is believed to have taken refuge in the American embassy in Beijing or some other such U.S. safe house.
That a nonviolent critic of official policy has to go on the lam is another indictment of the state of human rights in China, which have lagged far behind economic development there. While the United States may have little leverage on this score, it must take the side of freedom and offer him asylum if that is what he wants.
The biggest problem for U.S. negotiations is that China's leaders, conditioned by the country's turbulent past and wedded to their privileges, are unwilling to brook anything that could undermine their rule, including mere criticism. While they have liberalized the country in many ways during China's economic boom, they have resisted any changes that might pose a direct threat to the power they guard so jealously. As a result, any reproach from Washington will likely fall on deaf ears.
The U.S. certainly has grounds to criticize China's human rights record. Freedom of speech is stifled (news of Chen's elaborate escape, aided by an underground of fearless dissidents, has been suppressed inside the country), property and other rights are routinely trampled, and people have little say over who governs them or in what manner. Forced abortions (China denies these are official policy) are just one example of what happens when power goes unchecked. China's heavy-handed rule of Tibet is another. At the very least, the Obama administration should remind China that episodes such as the Chen affair badly tarnish the image of its rulers and diminish its standing in the community of nations.
Perhaps Chen's plight also will generate some more useful criticism of China's human rights record from nongovernmental sources as well, including from business leaders and China experts who are too often loath to jeopardize their access to the country.
China's despotic leadership will not be able to rely on repression forever; it's hard to believe that sooner or later citizens with economic clout will not demand political change. The pressure for such change will have to come from within, starting with dissidents like Chen, but they need to know there is international support for their movement.
To that end, the United States must make sure Chen's safety, and that of his family, isn't sacrificed to our need for good relations with a rising global power.
