By Andrew Quinn and Ben Blanchard
BEIJING, May 2 (Reuters) – Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng
left the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday “of his own
volition” after being there for six days, state media said, and
China denounced the United States for interfering in its
internal affairs.
It was not immediately clear whether Chen will stay in
China, as he has said he wants to do, or whether the medical
check is a prelude to sending him abroad for medical treatment,
which could be a face-saving solution for Beijing that does not
rule out Chen’s return.
Chen’s departure comes on the eve of high-level U.S.-China
talks and with both governments sensitive to the impact of the
drama on domestic politics — a U.S. presidential election and a
Chinese Communist Party leadership handover later this year.
“It must be pointed out that the United States Embassy took
the Chinese citizen Chen Guangcheng into the embassy in an
irregular manner, and China expresses its strong dissatisfaction
over this,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in a
statement carried by Xinhua news agency.
“The U.S. method was interference in Chinese domestic
affairs, and this is totally unacceptable to China. China
demands that the United States apologise over this, thoroughly
investigate this incident, punish those who are responsible, and
give assurances that such incidents will not recur.”
The blind lawyer left the embassy by car with U.S.
Ambassador Gary Locke, who took him to hospital, The Washington
Post said. A Post correspondent spoke briefly to Chen on the
phone and said he was fine.
Just hours earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
arrived in China for top-level talks that risk being upstaged by
the drama over Chen whose flight to the U.S. Embassy neither
China nor the United States would confirm until now.
Rights lawyer Teng Biao said he had spoken briefly with
Chen’s wife, Yuan Weijing, and said that both she and their two
children were now in Beijing.
He had no details on how they had been treated since Chen
escaped.
Chen’s plight has overshadowed the Strategic and Economic
Dialogue due to begin on Thursday. The United States hopes the
talks will encourage greater Chinese cooperation on trade as
well over Iran, Syria, North Korea and other international
disputes.
Relations could easily go awry, especially with the ruling
Communist Party wrestling with a leadership scandal and a
looming power succession.
Before leaving for China on Monday, Clinton promised to
press China’s leaders on human rights, an issue that has dropped
down the agenda between the two countries in the more than two
decades since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
NUDGE ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Washington is preoccupied with President Barack Obama’s bid
for re-election late this year, but ructions in Chinese domestic
politics have dogged ties, causing the Obama administration to
tread carefully in dealing with Beijing which faces a leadership
succession late this year.
“The vulnerability on the part of the Chinese leadership may
in turn make decision-makers even more cautious in foreign
policy issues,” said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese politics at
the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington D.C.
A commentary in China’s official People’s Daily overseas
edition said the United States was “disturbing still waters” by
setting up military bases in Asia, selling weapons to the region
and interfering in the South China Sea dispute.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is also set to
attend the talks, which come amid some progress in long-standing
disputes over currency, trade and market access.
But the case of dissident Chen is likely to hover in the
background throughout the two days of talks.
Washington had already become entangled in Chinese political
upheavals in February, when Wang Lijun, a vice mayor in
Chongqing in southwest China, fled to a U.S. consulate for a day
and denounced his boss, Bo Xilai, and Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, whom
Wang accused of killing a British businessman, Neil Heywood.
