Chinese activist arrives in U.S.

The blind Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng, who had been at the center of a diplomatic row between the U.S. and Chinese governments, completed a four-week journey from confinement in a rural Chinese village to the freedom of New York City, arriving Saturday night after a flight from Beijing with his wife and two children.

Three weeks after taking refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Chen arrived to study law at New York University. Chen has said he hopes will end up back in China doing legal reform, but could end up in prolonged and frustrating exile in the United States.

After landing on a United Airlines flight in Newark, Chen was whisked to NYU, which has arranged for him to live in graduate school housing just southeast of Washington Square, and for him to attend law tutorials taught in Chinese since Chen does not speak English. NYU has a U.S.-Asia Law Institute where Chen will be a guest scholar and find other Chinese speakers.

Human rights activists hailed Chen’s arrival, but added that while it might be a face-saving way to defuse diplomatic tensions, China remains unchanged.

“Chen’s escape should not distract the international community from the task at hand: convincing China’s leaders to respect the human rights of all it citizens,” Frank Jannuzi, head of the Washington office of Amnesty International, said in an email.

For the past two weeks, Chinese officials and American diplomats worked out of the public view to arrange for Chen and his family to travel out of the country. The State Department tapped contingency funds that are specially appropriated for diplomatic and consular emergencies to pay for the business-class flight, said a senior administration official who was not authorized to give his name. Two mid-level embassy officers in Beijing who had gotten to know Chen and are fluent in Chinese accompanied him and his family on the journey.

Chen’s dramatic escape one month ago from unlawful house arrest in his native Shandong province, and his emergence a week later at the fortified U.S. Embassy in Beijing, had threatened to derail U.S.-China relations at a time when Washington is seeking to engage China’s leaders on a wide range of global political and economic issues.

But the relatively quick resolution of Chen’s case -- so sudden that Chen himself did not even know Saturday morning that he was leaving for the United States — also suggested that both countries were anxious to resolve the matter swiftly and not let it unduly affect their broader relationship.

Since an initial, vitriolic statement by China’s Foreign Ministry that accused U.S. diplomats here of acting inappropriately in harboring Chen and demanded an apology, Chinese officials have largely refrained from further public comment on the case. And in the midst of the crisis, beginning May 4, China’s Defense Minister Liang Guanglie went ahead with a planned six-day visit to the United States, the first by a Chinese defense minister in nine years.

Still, Chen’s departure leaves several unresolved questions that seem to guarantee the case will continue to force human rights to the forefront of the agenda of the U.S.-China relationship.

The largest unsettled issue is the fate of the family members Chen left behind, particularly his nephew, Chen Kegui, who is in prison in Shandong facing charges of intent to murder after he used a kitchen knife to fight off three unannounced intruders at his home on April 26 following the discovery of his uncle’s escape. The three turned out to be government agents.

In addition, Chen Guangcheng’s older brother Chen Guangfu reportedly told a Hong Kong magazine that local officials shackled him to a chair for three days and beat him to get him to reveal how his brother managed to escape.

Meanwhile, Dongshigu and at least three other villages remain under the control of plainclothes police and armed thugs, with villagers in one location, Xishigu, telling The Washington Post in interviews that they feel frightened. The thugs have probably clamped down on those neighboring villages because they believe residents there may have aided in Chen Guangcheng’s nighttime escape, friends and others said.

After he was taken to Beijing airport Saturday, Chen Guangcheng told The Washington Post by telephone that he had mixed emotions about leaving because of his concern for his family members.

“I really regret not being able to see my mother and brother again before I leave,” Chen said. “In the future, I’ll continue to urge the Chinese government to completely investigate” what happened in Linyi city, in Shandong. “I won’t give up if I don’t get a result.”

It was a message repeated by human rights groups and other associates of Chen’s.

“The U.S. government and other foreign governments need to redouble their efforts to seek the protection of those relatives, friends and supporters of Chen Guangcheng who remain in China and are vulnerable to unlawful official reprisals merely due to their association with Chen and support for his cause,” said Phelim Kine, senior Asia researcher for the New York-based group Human Rights Watch.

Chen’s wife, Yuan Weijing, also appeared to feel mixed feelings at the sudden departure. “Of course, I have some worries about the investigation and the case of Chen Kegui,” she told The Washington Post. “We’ll see what they do next.”

Unlike dissidents who have sought political asylum in the United States, Chen is not currently serving a sentence nor is he on parole. He could, in theory, return to China on the passport that was hastily issued this month.

In a statement confirming Chen’s departure on Saturday morning, the State Department said, “We also express our appreciation for the manner in which we were able to resolve this matter and to support Mr. Chen’s desire to study in the U.S. and pursue his goals.”

In a statement Saturday, Jerome Cohen, co-director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at the university’s law school, said he was “very happy” to hear Chen had left Beijing.

The news of Chen’s departure for the United States was first announced by Bob Fu, founder of ChinaAid, a Texas-based Christian rights group. Fu spoke with Chen Saturday morning when he was being driven to the airport by Chinese officials.

“He was very excited and very glad to tell me. He said, ‘I’m looking forward to seeing you,’ “ Fu said in an interview.