Chen: From ‘Purported Diplomatic Triumph’ to ‘Diplomatic Fiasco’
Human-rights advocates on the Hill mobilized today in support of Chinese dissident Chen Guancheng in the face of an Obama administration that appeared more uncomfortable with the activist’s desire for asylum as the day went on.
“What began as a purported diplomatic triumph evolved into a diplomatic fiasco,” said Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, at a hearing quickly called on the matter today.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, pulled together the emergency hearing in the Rayburn House office building this afternoon amid reports that Chen, who had taken refuge in the U.S. Embassy after escaping from house arrest April 22, wanted to leave the country with his family.
Smith called it “appalling that President Obama had no comment” when asked about Chen at Monday’s joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.
The hearing featured various Chinese human-rights activists — but the headliner was Chen, who spoke by mobile phone from a hospital in Beijing after calling hearing witness Bob Fu of ChinaAid.
“I want to come to the U.S. to rest. I have not had a rest in 10 years,” Chen told the hearing. “I’m concerned most right now with the safety of my mother and brothers. I really want to know what’s going on with them.”
“I want to meet with Secretary Clinton,” Chen added. “I hope I can get more help from her.”
“We are praying for you and we will be unceasing in our efforts” to help, Smith told Chen — fittingly, on this National Day of Prayer.
Chen, who lost his sight in his youth and self-trained as a lawyer, is a champion for Chinese who have been abused by the communist government’s one-child policy. He fought back — even with a class-action lawsuit — against the forced sterilizations and forced abortions targeting the rural poor, and torture of those who try to resist and their families.
Sentenced to prison in 2006, Chen had been under house arrest since his release in 2010. As Chen tried to communicate with the outside world, Chinese authorities beat Chen and his wife and installed metal sheeting over their windows. They even confiscated his young daughter’s toys.
Smith tried to visit Chen last year to no avail, as did actor Christian Bale, who was roughed up by Chinese guards as a CNN camera crew in tow filmed it all.
Over at the White House today, officials tried to deflect questions to the State Department as moral questions came crashing down on the administration from all corners.
After all, Wednesday morning began with a sunny statement from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton following Chen’s departure from the embassy and admittance to a Beijing hospital to receive treatment for a foot injury suffered in his escape.
“I am pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng’s stay and departure from the U.S. embassy in a way that reflected his choices and our values,” Clinton said. “I was glad to have the chance to speak with him today and to congratulate him on being reunited with his wife and children. Mr. Chen has a number of understandings with the Chinese government about his future, including the opportunity to pursue higher education in a safe environment.”
As if trying to wish Chen into taking the route that would be diplomatically easier on the U.S., White House spokesman Jay Carney, under a barrage of questions at the daily press briefing, kept stressing that Chen had previously said he wanted to stay in China.
“I can assure you that the president is not concerned about political back-and-forth on this issue,” Carney said. “He is focused on the need to advance U.S. interests in our broad-based relationship with China — very important economic, diplomatic relationship with China. He has and will continue to make it priority in that relationship, or part of that relationship, an open and frank discussion of our concerns about human rights.”
Smith noted that, despite official protestations to the contrary, there are questions about whether Chen was pressured to leave the U.S. compound, shortly before Clinton’s planned arrival for economic talks with Beijing.
Smith said that he called the embassy after learning that Chen wanted to speak with him, but his call was never set up by State Department officials.
As if trying to buffer China’s anger over Chen’s initial refuge, State Department officials told reporters on a call Wednesday that Chen was admitted to the embassy on humanitarian grounds, seeing as how he’s blind and had been injured in the 200-mile journey to get there. The officials repeatedly stressed that Chen wanted to stay in China and that the Chinese regime promised him humane treatment and university courses.
– and Clinton have betrayed him, along with Wang Lijun. The Russians also see Obama will capitulate when pressed and threaten accordingly. The Manchurian Candidate will be the re-elected incumbent with them manipulating.
It’s just like happens in Iran, every day.
Perhaps we should wait until after the election, when Obama can be more flexible.
I do not see the point of this article.
We do not have the facts or the evidence yet.
How would China act if an arrested American lawyer sought refuge in the Chinese embassy in DC then changed his mind and left
-then changed his mind and wanted to fly to China with the Chinese Security of State?
“I do not see the point of this article.”
I am appalled if that’s some sort of blind joke. Chen can do almost anything, with or without seeing things.
But..but…but…Obama must have screwed up. It is what we live for.
I see the point of the article, but I agree we don’t have all the facts, and we’ve been punked before. There’s a lot of he-said-he-said here. Did Chen originally say he did NOT want asylum but wanted only to live safely with his family in China? And then change his mind when U.S. State Dept. officials didn’t accompany him out of the hospital? In contradiction to a previous promise?
There’s no doubt we should now give Chen asylum since he is asking for it, but I’m not sure the whole “diplomatic disaster” was the U.S.’s fault.
Communist countries punish the families of dissidents. This poor man is trying to save his entire family. Individuals are not important to our current administration; only the collective matters! It is difficult for our current crop of democrats, who so admire Chairman Mao, to want to help real people.
Great, one less lawyer!
Fool! He is an advocate for people who are tortured and killed for refusing an abortion; he is an advocate for women who are forcibly dragged off the street, thrown into a van by police, taken to a big concrete room covered in blood and dead foetuses, thrown on the floor and have cruel, forced abortions in an horrific manner,of which the pain and suffering causes many of these mothers to die on the spot. Their crime? Daring to have a second baby.
The world needs lawyers like Chen who are willing to lay down their lives for the sake of others.
You may need a lawyer someday and when you call him, I hope he laughs at you and hangs up the phone.
The facts and the evidence can be found in various places in the net, try Women Without Frontiers and Lifesite; I feel sure there are others, but I received ample information over a period of time from these two. His case has only recently come to the forefront of news, having received only scant and rare attention in the past, but now, it is critical for this noble man who has suffered so much to escape the Chinese Authorities, both him and his family. He has been offered a scholarship at a University in USA, I heard on BBC World News this morning, but although he has the right to live in USA, it is now up to the Chinese Authorities to give passports to him and his family.
The “point” of the article is self-evident.
We have plenty of evidence. The man placed a call to congress and begged for help. An agent of the state department reported off the record that they were told Chen’s wife would be beat to death if he did not leave the embassy – yet this is not what he was told. We have a very evil president with very evil minions in the state department.
You do realize that China owns a lot of our debt? We’re not in a position to criticize them, because they literally own (a part) of us.
Bush was pretty much the worst spender in US history until Obama came along. Both parties are at fault for this, but our hands are tied, unless you want them to collapse our currency. Do you?
This place is hawkish, but it doesn’t want to seem to face the consequences of those positions – upsetting a country that buys much of out debt, driving up the price of gas to $10 a gallon by a war with Iran, etc
Beyond that, China could easily criticize us for our prison system. We have what, like twice as many people in jail as they do? And yes, some of ours are basically political prisoners – say, Wesley Snipes, who was a tax protester. Or people like George Zimmerman who are likely going to be convicted purely for propaganda purposes.
The best way to promote human rights, is to promote them here at home, first. Stop locking up so many people for dubious reasons, Canada somehow survives without being the police state we are…
Wow, economic, legal, and socioeconomic ignorance all topped off with a generous helping of logical fallacy. You must be a liberal. You certainly have the mind for it.
Of course the democrats own four fifths of the last twelve years deficit(Earned in the last three and a half), where republicans own one fifth(Sort of, given that democrats controlled congress for two of the eight years Bush was in office. . and just magically those two years were ‘bush’s” largest deficits)of the deficit, but hey, lets call it ‘equally responsible’!
Mmmm, and maybe our prisons would be less full if we followed the Chinese example and executed 5,000 or more people each year? Or perhaps we shouldn’t criticise that either, owing to our debt? Your comment shows typical liberal moral blindness and attempted equivalence, Jeremy! Well defined by Jeff.
Exactly. China buys our debt. We don’t buy theirs. We’re in the driver’s seat. They need us more than we need them. I realize people just need something to be scared about, but China buying our debt isn’t really one of them.
Wesley Snipes is not a tax protester. He’s an idiot who bought into a pack of stupidity.
I don’t see why we need to kowtow to the Chinese. If you owe the bank ten thousand dollars the bank owns you. If you owe the bank ten billion dollars you own the bank. What are they going to invest in if not our bonds? EU bonds? Who will they sell their junk to should we demand fair trade? I think we actually have the stronger hand.
If a major military nation (borrowws trillions from another major major military nation, and spends to the point of a Greek fiscal crisis, what do you think will happen?
China will not want to start a thermonuclear war, hopefully, but might settle some of our indebtedness to them with territory: say Hawaii with Alaska thrown in. Stiffing a major military power is not going to happen. We will have to give them some of our ASSSETS to avoid war.
If you need something to be afraid of, fine, turn the Yellow Peril into a full blown behemoth of a bogeyman.
For me, this little bit of advice from Brothersjudd.com sums it up nicely.
http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/2010/02/did_the_realists_learn_nothing.html
“A state that can’t hear the truth about itself ought not be taken seriously. No one was served well by the West pretending that the USSR was a superpower and it didn’t take much more than Ronald Reagan branding them a failed state–on their own terms, as well as ours–for their collapse to begin.
Suppose that President Obama decided to emulate the Gipper instead of Ike and rub the PRC’s nose in the futility of its quest for great nation status. To begin with, he could point out that not only is Taiwan never reverting to control by the mainland but that Tibet, Hong Kong, and Uighurstan–to begin with–will soon be free and independent as well. Follow that up by pointing out that because of the demographic catastrophe their inhuman regime has inflicted on itself they’ll tip over into the same sort of decline Japan and secular Europe face, but will do so before ever attaining the affluence of the others. Mention the obvious geostrategic fact that America has encircled them with an alliance of democratic states–India, Australia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, Russia-sort-of, etc.–against which they would be overwhelmed in the event of a war (though it really only takes the U.S. to do the overwhelming). And remind them that their “economic miracle” is not based on any Chinese innovation–not political nor economic–but on their willingness to assemble stuff for us more cheaply than a grown-up nation would do the work.
Give it to them with the bark on. It’ll help them in the long run.”
I sure hope and pray that you are 100% correct, but i do not buy it for a sec…..If the US Gvt. knew how ruthless these Chinese will end up being, there would not be a cent passed to them…..our best bet will be to get rid of our own Communists, and get some good conservative men and women running our foreign affairs…China is using the US dollar to buy out large sections of the western USA, { Idaho} for one, and buying every thing in sight in Brazil, with their profits from Walmart, Inc….
It’s like the old Jewish humor joke.
Rabinowicz is pacing the floor of his bedroom as his wife tries to sleep. Finally, she asks him, “What’s wrong?”
Rabinowoicz says, “I owe Finkelmann 10,000 and it’s due tomorrow!”
She asks, “Do you have it?”
“No.”
“Then come bed, and let Finkelmann pace.”
People here seem to think Macro economics is no different from personal finances. It is. People buy American debt because they think we have a future, that we’re good for it, and that we are honorable enough to “pay it.” No one buys Chinese debt because no one trusts the Chinese that way, or push come to shove, in any way. Not even the Chinese themselves. As I understand it, your average Chinese has a very clear idea of what money he’s willing to risk, and what money he isn’t. The latter is what he sends to the US.
Ditto for politics. Or we wouldn’t be talking about this Chen fellow.
And when we owned a great deal of Chinese debt they kissed our a.s.s., right? Wrong.
Yes, we are “Hawkish.”
Perhaps that’s because all of us here actually live in the real world. You know, the one where your actions have consequences, money doesn’t appear magically, and maybe, just maybe, we have people in jail because they are guilty of actual crimes.
Can’t say much about the rest of you.
This is a Non Story to displace the real story; Chinese High level officer Bo Xinlai and his wife Gu were using British Intelligence to launder dirty money. If people knew how corrupt the Banking system truly is there would be a run on the banks, and finally shut down the dirty system once and for all.
How about someone at PJM going back to the roots of Journalism and researching real stories like Bo and British Intelligence money laundering, Saudi Arabia and their funding of terrorism and Sharia law, Federal Reserve wiring trillions to Europe in 2007 and 2008 without congressional knowledge or oversight, Sunken Russian nuclear subs sitting off USA’s eastern Seaboard,
or any actual real story that affects lives in a tangible manner.
The blind activist is a fluff story meant to distract people like a shiny bauble, unfortunately it works very well.
They were using British Intelligence? Does British Intelligence bear any responsibility when they facilitate laundering and bribe people with Aston-Martins as Neil Heywood was doing?
It was after all the British who purposely corrupted Qing officials with enticements like clocks, furs, and oh yeah- opium. When it came to Japan, Americans were much more direct sending Commodore Perry to terrorize the shoreline. These actions lead fairly directly to both Sino wars and the turmoil that allowed Mao’s takeover.
Bo and Gu are 2 officials in a country that’s 4.3 times the US population. They are as much (as little) a non story as Chen. “The real story” goes back about 200 years, which Westerners prefer to forget.
I’m not quite sure what the criticism of the Administration is. It looks like we didn’t have any good options, and once Chen left the embassy they got worse. China was basically holding Chen’s family hostage. We certainly don’t have the means to “rescue” them. Are we really going to risk war with another nuclear state over one family? Even some form of embargo would be risky. Our economy can barely manage 1/4 impulse, now is not the time to chance a trade war.
It looks to me like handing Chen over to China was the least bad of our outcomes. Let this be a lesson to dissidents world-wide: If you’re going to take refuge in an US embassy, don’t leave anyone you can’t live without behind.
Jeff, you may be right that there were no good options, but the apparent (despite the denials) abandonment of a BLIND political activist in a Chinese hospital seems more like a rush to get rid of a problem than a considered reaction by responsible US diplomats. Locke, Clinton and Obama all bear responsibility for the actions of the Embassy staff – after all, they were “only carrying out orders”.
This is the land where come the “huddled masses yearning to be free” as it says on Lady Liberty – a tradition I for one continue to support (as long as it’s done legally).
I agree with the “huddled masses” bit, but once Chen walked out of the embassy we lost any power over his fate. I’m not aware of any evidence that allows us to differentiate between us shamefully pushing Chen out the door and him nobly walking out to save his wife from torture and execution.
On another level we need to be concerned about signals. There are over 1.3 billion Chinese, most of whom live in fairly terrible conditions only loosely related to China’s government. If we were to grant asylum to anyone who asked our embassy staff would have time for little else.
I’m Pro-Choice for asylum for Chen Guancheng!
All bow to our Communist Chinese overlords.
perhaps a different outcome from Obummer if Chen is pro-abortion activist instead of pro-life.
Clinton’s and Obama’s motives are quite clear. Chen is a pro life activists and there is no way he can expect any help from abortion advocates in the New American government. Clinton would rather spend all her time on helping her Moslem Brotherhood friends in the middle east and Obama must appease his Left wing feminist block. Poor Chen will be thrown under the bus by the ruthless Americanized Left.
There is no reason for Chen to be denied the freedom to travel or live in America, but he should also bring along his family of Chinese computer programmers. They are needed to partially supplement the shortage that exists among U.S. software manufacturers. America should also donate its entire prison population to work the Chinese rice paddies in exchange for thousands of their computer experts. China would agree to the offer.
Boy, this brings back memories. Back in the Seventies, we had all these Soviet defections going on, and we had Detente and everyone was talking about how we were going have to get along with a Soviets for the foreseeable future. Anyone remember that TV movie The Defection of Simas Kudirka?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Defection_of_Simas_Kudirka
Really, how good is this? When a Chinese citizen gets in trouble with his own government, he turns to the US. It’s beautiful. He knows that we’re his only hope for a fair shake. China is a nation that cannot bear to hear the truth about itself. They need not be taken too seriously, except by those people who, well, just need something to be scared of.
God bless this man. I could not imagine anything more inhumane than brutally stealing and killing a child from within a mother’s womb. I don’t know how to pray to saints, but I think this would be an appropriate situation to pray for a miracle from Pope John Paul. Please God keep this man and his family safe. I can’t imagine how tired he must be living under the constant threat of terror and tyranny.
“The Obama administration has a moral — a high moral — obligation to protect Chen and his family, and to do anything less would be scandalous,” Wolf said.
You’re kidding me, right? You’re talking about the Obama administration having a “high moral obligation?” Give me a break. I haven’t seen such a cynical American president and administration in years. These are the same people who left the Iranian people twisting in the wind in 2009 as the mullahs were having demonstrators exterminated in the streets of Tehran. These are the same people who treat our one true ally in the Middle East, Israel, as if they were an enemy. And these are the same people who are afraid, yes afraid, to say anything to China about North Korea, even though China could probably end North Korea’s reign of terror whenever it wanted to. Obama and Clinton would happily throw Chen under the bus if it ment a good trade agreement with China. And the only reason Clinton and Obama are doing anything aboaut it now is because of all the bad press they are getting. But do not talk about “morals” or “principles” whenever talking about the Obama administration, because they have none.
Why would this president, who as an Illinois legislator, supported letting babies that survived abortions lie in a room to die support an anti abortionist? Wouldn’t this be a real women’s reproductive health issue instead of a lazy university student not traveling to her Planned Parenthood for her birth control pills where they wouldn’t cost $3000 per year?
Obama, like everyone else, does have high moral obligations. Given the gravity of the matter, I suspect he will “vote: present.”
It is clear that dissent in any form is not tolerated in China.
The most harmless complaint has life-threatening implications.
Yes, the most innocuous criticism is equivalent to besmirching the reputation of Mao Zedong, the infallible founder of the Communist Party of China.
Let us here in America find common ground with a man that stands tall for the most basic human right of all—the right to life—free from forced sterilization!
Our Bill of Rights holds that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—is a natural condition of existence.
There is no excuse for any nation to suppress such a call for humanity.
Only a great nation whose earned-wisdom over two-thousand years of existence must demand of itself that it is time that the rights of the people must rule with the consent of the governed.
Anything less is an aknowledgement that the embrace of tyranny is legitimate.
How does the President of the United States respond? “NO COMMENT.”
I realize, of course, that Mr Chen’s pleas to the higher powers of the heavens for freedom’s help may upset the carefully orchestrated photo op of the next campaign stop.
Nevertheless, the moral soul of America stops here. We as a nation can never go back if we retreat on this moral principle of common dignity.
Bring Mr Chen and his family to our “shores for those yearning to be free.”
Just what we need another free loading humanitarian emigrant lawyer. Come on in the taxpayer loot is available for all those yearning for FREE stuff.
To Westie: Just the other “immigrant, humanitarian Lawyers” wanting to come to the USA? Freeloader? I don’t think so! His skills are needed to fight injustice in the US. Or should he be left to be tortured to death along with his wife and son and mother and brothers? If he loses this battle-he’s lost his life. Not that he considers it when he is fighting for the rights of others. He has given his skills as a lawyer for free to those who cannot afford it and who are unjustly treated! – Freeloader?!! I don’t think so.
To Westie: Meant to say: JUST WHO are the other immigrant, humanitarian lawyers (etc) as per remainder of my previous comment.
“If we stay here or get sent back to Shandong, our lives would be at stake,” Yuan told CNN. “Under such circumstances, I hope the U.S. government will protect us and help us leave China based on its values of protecting human rights.” Chen
Time for Chen to wake up and smell the human rights coffee.
American Ambassador to China Locke is a Kissinger stooge. He was a CEO for Kissinger and Associates that is reported to manage $600 billion of Chinese government money. Kissinger is a wanted war criminal and responsible for the murder of about a million ethnic Chinese in Asia. The Chinese government still throws out the red carpet when Heinz “the war criminal” comes to town. Go figure?
The globalist war mongers like Kissinger have been moving jobs, investment, and production facilities to China for quite some time now. China is booming, the U.S. is swooning. Did you honestly think you would find refuge with these monsters?
To Smith_Citizen: You fool! You know nothing of true lawyers like Chen who are willing to lay down their lives for the sake of saving women and their unborn babies. He has suffered many beatings and torture, is blind and still fighting for the lives of these people and you sit on your comfortable backside and condemn him. Presuming you are sighted (though I doubt it) what have you sacrificed to save the lives of others? The abortion rooms are a nightmare-large concrete rooms covered in blood and dead foetuses, and crammed with women screaming in fear and begging for the lives of their unborn. They are thrown on the floor and in the crudest and most painful fashion have their baby aborted in view of all. The suffering is so sever, the women frequently die on the floor alongside the bloodied foetus. This is a reality for every woman in china. They are literally dragged off the street by police and thrown in a van and taken to these “abortion rooms.”
One day you may need a lawyer-I hope he laughs at you and hangs up the phone and leaves you in your predicament.
The blind dissident is not completely blind, he has a third eye. Once in America Chen will contact millions of Chinese couples asking them to march on Tiananmen Square. Tanks and planes will not stop the yearning for a second child. Condoms and abortion clinics will be destroyed; the largest sex orgy in human history will take place. In nine months 400 million Chinese babies will be born.
It is called the mothers revolution and their hero is CHEN FOR TEN, he wants large families in China instead of mothers limited to only one child. CHEN FOR TEN says the lord will provide food for the ten billion new babies.
Obama’s White House and State Department outflanked by one, blind Chinese dissident! Shows you how much foreign policy game this administration really has……….or doesn’t have, as the case may be. No wonder we can’t really, successfully negotiate with any of the bad guys around the globe. Ain’t got no skills.
China and that the Chinese regime promised him humane treatment and university courses…welcome to Auschwitz. Im sure he will enjoy the cleansing “showers”