MCLC: twists of diplomacy in Chen Guangcheng case

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: twists of diplomacy in Chen Guangcheng case
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (5/9/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/world/asia/behind-twists-of-diplomacy-in-
case-of-chen-guangcheng.html

Behind Twists of Diplomacy in the Case of a Chinese Dissident
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON ‹ Over two days of meetings with China¹s leaders in Beijing
last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had not uttered a
word about Chen Guangcheng as her aides arranged to transfer the blind
Chinese dissident from the United States Embassy to a hospital, only to
have the plan unexpectedly blow up. Then, last Friday, she finally
broached the subject with China¹s senior foreign policy official, Dai
Bingguo.

Mr. Chen, she said, should go to the United States after all.

The Chinese were furious. They considered Mrs. Clinton¹s request a
betrayal of American assurances made during 30 hours of talks. China had
insisted on absolute secrecy, demanding no public confirmation that Mr.
Chen was in the embassy by any Americans, even members of Congress, whom
the Obama administration kept in the dark.

³I don¹t want to talk to him anymore,² Cui Tiankai, the vice foreign
minister, erupted after Mrs. Clinton intervened, gesturing toward Kurt M.
Campbell, an assistant secretary of state and a crucial negotiator.

The confrontation was a pivotal moment in a diplomatic drama replete with
unanticipated twists, threats and counterthreats, and at times comical
intrigue. Mr. Campbell, for example, took to sneaking out of his hotel in
Beijing through an entrance by the garbage bins to avoid public attention.

The Chinese security apparatus, meanwhile, aggressively tapped and blocked
phone calls by embassy officials, with an agent at one point brazenly
dialing into a conversation between Mr. Chen and his wife on the cellphone
of the deputy chief of mission, Robert S. Wang. The Americans, fearing
that the Chinese would restrict access to Mr. Chen¹s hospital, even
considered disguising an employee as a nurse to gain entry.

Mrs. Clinton¹s intervention ultimately resulted in a second arrangement to
allow Mr. Chen to study at New York University but not to seek asylum,
which the Chinese considered an affront. Under terms that have not been
disclosed, Mr. Chen is expected to leave in days. The outcome, said
several officials who recounted the story, reflected a maturing
relationship now able to weather a fraught diplomatic entanglement. The
officials would discuss diplomatic talks only on the condition of
anonymity.

³At a strategic level I think the two sides will quietly take some
confidence from this,² a senior administration official said.

The agreement came at the cost of what the officials said was considerable
strain on both sides, and it could still fall apart, though Mr. Chen said
Tuesday that the authorities had accepted his application to travel
abroad. Yet the frenzied days and sleepless nights seem to have averted a
major embarrassment for the administration and defused a crisis that
threatened to upend relations between the two countries.

Mr. Chen¹s case highlighted what the Americans view as an intensifying
struggle within the Chinese leadership between hard-liners and reformers.
At one point during the talks, the State Department¹s legal adviser,
Harold H. Koh, encountered officials from China¹s powerful Ministry of
State Security arguing in the hallway with their counterparts from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying Mr. Chen should be punished, not
coddled by the Americans.

At the center of it was Mr. Chen, who after his harrowing escape from
Chinese security officials and arrival at the embassy experienced wild
mood swings ‹ crying at times ‹ even as he bargained with the cunning of
the lawyer he had taught himself to be.

Once released to the hospital, he used three preprogrammed cellphones
provided by the Americans to press his demands in public. He did not want
asylum, he said, but rather an investigation by Chinese central government
authorities into his mistreatment.

The use of technology ‹ posts on Twitter, a dramatic call to a
Congressional hearing ‹ boxed in the Chinese but also left Americans
scrambling. After speaking to his lawyer and his wife, Mr. Chen abruptly
changed his mind and decided he could not stay in China. At that point the
American officials were in the dark about his shift.

³It took us a little while ‹ we were already unbelievably exhausted ‹ to
find our bearings,² the senior administration official said of Mr. Chen¹s
change of heart. What complicated the diplomacy was the fact that the
Chinese considered the very notion of negotiations over a Chinese citizen
unacceptable. They refused to make any binding commitments to the
Americans, exposing the administration to criticism once Mr. Chen left the
embassy. Even now, there is no official agreement, but simply a series of
³understandings.²

One of the senior American officials likened it to the Shanghai
Communiqué, the 1972 agreement that opened the door to relations between
the United States and China but artfully left ambiguous the status of
Taiwan.

President Obama, who was first notified when Mr. Chen was already in the
embassy, refused to comment on his fate, even when asked directly. That
and Mrs. Clinton¹s avoidance of his case in her meetings with China¹s
leaders gave the Chinese space to resolve the matter quietly.

³Even if we had negotiated a text, which would have taken six months, the
Chinese could have nullified it,² this official said. ³Face is more
important in Asian society than any contract.²

The Americans knew Mr. Chen¹s plight well. He was jailed in 2006 after
helping villagers in Shandong Province sue the local authorities for
subjecting women to forced abortions and sterilizations. After his release
in 2010, the authorities kept him under a form of extralegal house arrest.

Even so, the officials said they knew nothing of his preparations to
escape from his farmhouse on the night of April 22.
They learned of it only when He Peirong, a rights advocate, called the
embassy three days later and told officials there that he was in hiding on
the outskirts of Beijing, his foot broken from a fall during the escape.

After a late-night meeting at the State Department on April 25, Mrs.
Clinton approved a plan to spirit him into the embassy, an operation that
involved hustling him from one car to another twice. ³Everyone understood
the magnitude of the decision, how unpredictable it was, and that there
would be consequences,² the senior official said.

With Mr. Chen inside the embassy, the administration held a series of
meetings in Washington to decide how to manage the crisis ‹ with the State
Department leading the effort and the White House overseeing it through
frequent secure videoconference calls. On April 27, Mr. Campbell informed
the Chinese ambassador in Washington, Zhang Yesui, of Mr. Chen¹s
whereabouts. The diplomat appeared stunned.

Mr. Campbell then flew to Beijing, where he joined Ambassador Gary Locke,
who cut short a vacation in Bali, and Mr. Koh, who happened to be in China
for a conference, to form the American negotiating team. Mr. Koh had been
waiting to board a Yangtze River cruise when Mrs. Clinton¹s chief of
staff, Cheryl D. Mills, ordered him to find a secure phone. The closest
one turned out to be four hours away in the United States Consulate in
Chengdu.

An already complicated situation became grave when an embassy doctor
examined Mr. Chen. In addition to the broken foot from his escape, he
complained of severe abdominal pain. His stool contained so much blood
that the doctor feared he might have colon cancer. That fueled the urgency
to get him to a hospital.

The talks with the Chinese began on April 29, and did not start well. ³We
had to go through the process of him just ripping into us,² the senior
official said, referring to Mr. Cui, who complained that the United States
had violated diplomatic practice.

China¹s negotiators suggested that they would cancel the Strategic and
Economic Dialogue, which was scheduled to begin four days later with the
arrival of Mrs. Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. The
Americans, in turn, hinted that they, too, were prepared to walk away,
hoping to use the prospect of constructive talks as leverage.

Mr. Koh, who composed a memorandum that made the case for taking in Mr.
Chen, proposed having him study at East China Normal University in
Shanghai in a program sponsored by New York University. The Chinese
objected, considering the program ³too Western.² The Americans were soon
holding parallels sets of talks, with Mr. Campbell meeting with the
Chinese and Mr. Locke and Mr. Koh effectively negotiating with a mercurial
Mr. Chen.

All along, the officials said, Mr. Chen said that he did not want to leave
China, but that he feared leaving the embassy. At one point, Mr. Koh asked
him if he was prepared to spend 30 years there, evoking the experience of
other famous dissidents, like Daw Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, and telling
him about the travails of his own father, a diplomat, who fled South Korea
for the United States in 1961.

Despite initial resistance, the Chinese appeared willing to consider
options for Mr. Chen. One official said they wanted to resolve the case in
36 hours. They did not object to the possibility of his studying at seven
other universities in China, but bristled at the idea of an investigation
and were offended when the Americans presented a list of 13 people,
including Mr. Chen¹s brother and nephew, whom they wanted to protect from
harassment. (Some have since been released.)

One Chinese official lashed out: ³The whole thing could be resolved in 36
minutes, not 36 hours. Just turn him over.²
Mr. Chen, though, wanted a gesture. The Chinese authorities arranged for
Mr. Chen¹s wife, Yuan Weijing, and their two children to travel by train
to Beijing. The American deputy chief of mission, Mr. Wang, met them and
offered his phone to allow Mrs. Yuan to make the call that the Chinese
agent monitored.

When Mr. Chen again hesitated, the Chinese indicated that they would send
his family back, which critics have interpreted as a threat, saying it was
conveyed to Mr. Chen by American officials effectively to coerce him to
leave. Mr. Locke, Mr. Campbell and other officials have publicly denied
that. Even so, one official acknowledged, ³We told him very clearly that
there was only so far we could go with assurances.²

The arrangement, reached hours after Mrs. Clinton arrived in Beijing that
Wednesday, fell apart immediately. In the car, Mr. Chen called a lawyer,
Teng Biao, who told him it was a mistake to leave the embassy. ³No, no, I
want to do this,² Mr. Chen replied, according to a person in the car.
³It¹s a good deal.²

The scene at the hospital quickly became confused. The Chinese did not
object to allowing an American diplomat to stay overnight, contrary to
reports that prompted the criticism. As with much of the story, the moment
turned less on geopolitics than on human relations. The diplomat, in fact,
left because he believed that Mr. Chen wanted privacy with his wife.

Thursday was chaotic, as reports that the agreement had fallen apart led
Republican critics to castigate the administration. At the hospital, Mr.
Chen underwent lengthy examinations, preventing the Americans from
contacting him directly. Doctors found that he was suffering not from
cancer, but from colitis.

In her meeting with Mr. Dai, the foreign policy official, on Friday, Mrs.
Clinton never explicitly asked for anything. She made it clear, however,
that she would have to speak about Mr. Chen when she appeared before the
press. The subtlety worked: within hours, the Chinese released a statement
that Mr. Chen could travel to study abroad like any citizen, and the State
Department announced that it would expedite any request for a visa.

As one official put it, ³The days of blowing up the relationship over a
single guy are over.²