What is Chen Guangcheng's Cause?
If you followed the news this weekend, you may have heard about Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng's thrilling escape from house arrest. The top of this New York Times story has the details:
BEIJING — For months, Chen Guangcheng, one of China’s best-known dissidents, played a cat-and-mouse game with the phalanx of guards encircling his home. He dug a tunnel to try to escape, a friend says, but was found out. And he sneaked out a video that alerted his supporters to the smothering confinement he said he and his wife endured at the hands of the men who kept them virtual prisoners in their rural farmhouse.
Then last Sunday night, in an improbable escape, Mr. Chen, who is blind and reportedly weak from months of mistreatment, scaled the wall that had been built around his house, slipped past his security detail and made a desperate sprint to apparent safety in Beijing. The daring rush for freedom could not have been possible without a small network of activists who risked detention to help him and who, supporters with knowledge of the escape said, used coded messages to communicate and elude a surveillance apparatus that is one of the world’s most pervasive.
By Saturday, three activists who had either helped him or had been advocates in the past had disappeared, including the woman who drove Mr. Chen more than 300 miles to Beijing and a man who admitted to meeting the dissident as he was shuttled between safe houses in the capital. The man’s wife said he was taken away by the police.
Friends of Mr. Chen, along with people in the Chinese government, say he is now inside the American Embassy in Beijing. If true, that creates diplomatic headaches for the United States just days before Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other American officials arrive for annual talks.
Harboring one of China's most well-known dissidents -- you may recall Christian Bale was roughed up trying to visit him in December -- sets up some interesting diplomatic challenges. And, in fact, the U.S. has sent a senior diplomat to Beijing to manage the crisis.
It's an amazing story, a tale of dramatic escape, made all the more compelling by the activist's blindness. One story I read quoted Ai Weiwei, another government critic who has faced slightly less hostile residential detention. After talking to a friend familiar with the escape, Ai said:
“You know he’s blind, so the night to him is nothing,” Mr. Ai said the friend told him. “I think that’s a perfect metaphor.”
In any case, you can read a dozen stories and not have the answer to what should be a shockingly simple question: From what, exactly, is Chen Guangcheng dissenting?
Once you find out, you have to wonder why it's missing from all the stories.
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: What is Chen Guangcheng's Cause?
If I was advising China, I'd tell them to spread the rumor that Chen Guangcheng, along with being against abortion, is supporting the American Catholic Church in its fight against the HHS mandate. Obama would have him turned over to the Chinese authorities in about 5 minutes.
May '11
Re: What is Chen Guangcheng's Cause?
Anyone want to bet that Obama hands him back to the ChiComs?
Dec '10
Re: What is Chen Guangcheng's Cause?
The diplomatic nightmare this causes for the Obama administration is yet another example of the moral hazard the American debt owed to China imposes. Can the US afford to do what everyone knows is the right thing under the circumstances?
BTW, does anyone know what has happened/is happening to Chen Guangcheng's wife and child?
Apr '11
Re: What is Chen Guangcheng's Cause?
I think even if the Chinese did not hold a cent of our debt, this would be a potentially tricky situation. The Chinese government really does not like it when the world's attention is drawn to its gross human rights abuses. It seriously undercuts their standing as an equal with the West.
I wish Mr. Chen the best of luck.
May '10
Re: What is Chen Guangcheng's Cause?
I wish Mr. Chen refuge in the U.S. Embassy. I fear he will have to rely on luck.
Oct '11
Re: What is Chen Guangcheng's Cause?
Hmm, Mollie, it's not black & white that the Post is ignoring Chen's issue. The links in the lead sentence go to 1) a 2005 article on the issue, and 2) a day-old article that opens with "...his outspoken opposition to China’s forced abortion and sterilization policies...". So yes, the article you cite says nothing about the issue, but I don't think the Post is trying to hide anything.
The Examiner's not much of a news source - they're often sloppy. Perhaps they're over-eager.
Re: What is Chen Guangcheng's Cause?
Barfly: Hmm, Mollie, it's not black & white that the Post is ignoring Chen's issue. The links in the lead sentence go to 1) a 2005 article on the issue, and 2) a day-old article that opens with "...his outspoken opposition to China’s forced abortion and sterilization policies...". So yes, the article you cite says nothing about the issue, but I don't think the Post is trying to hide anything.
The Examiner's not much of a news source - they're often sloppy. Perhaps they're over-eager. · Apr 30 at 6:48pm
Well, I was going to write something up about this for a media analysis site I work for and noticed that many stories -- which were downplaying or ignoring the abortion issue -- were replaced by stories that didn't. So the coverage improved.
Oct '11
Re: What is Chen Guangcheng's Cause?
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
Well, I was going to write something up about this for a media analysis site I work for and noticed that many stories -- which were downplaying or ignoring the abortion issue -- were replaced by stories that didn't. So the coverage improved. · May 3 at 7:21am
I'm not surprised by that at all. One of sorriest things a writer can do on the Internet, I think, is to revise his own history. To be of the left is to take perception to be reality; I suppose they see nothing wrong with tailoring what one has already said in response to its reception.