Los Americanos are still not acknowledging that Chen is in the American Embassy in Beijing or otherwise in safe American hands. Chinese officialdom says the Americans have him and those have been the reports in all media, mainstream and tributary, since Friday.
Maybe the Americans don't want him.
Both the New York Times and Washington Post have reported that Chen's flight has caused some gastrointestinal upset in the Obama Administration because the Obamas recent strategy has been to encourage good relations by not getting on China's case about human rights and because Secretary of State Clinton is due in Beijing this coming week for the Strategic...something. It's very strategic and having the well-known blind Chinese human rights lawyer hiding under the bed was not part of the strategy. Clinton likes to be prepared and this was not in her review notes. This Obama strategy played out when Wang Lijun fled to the American consulate in Chengdu in February and told that Bo Xilai had been responsible for the sinking of the Titanic and had been on the grassy knoll in Dallas and the Obamas turned him over to the Center where he has since been receiving "vacation-style medical treatment."
So when "the Chen Guangcheng case" is brought up in the upcoming Strategic-something discussions it won't be the Americans who bring it up.
I say, I have a bone to pick, well maybe a piece of cartilage, no a bone, with Chen here if the reports are true that he is not seeking asylum. Dude man, don't put the Obamas in that position. What position even are you asking them to assume? If you were asking them for asylum, a la Fang Lizhi, that causes them lower g.i. distress, a la Bush41, but that's ok. They would take their Tums and welcome you to America and they would get you safely out of there. The Obamas may be woolly in the knees but this is what America is for.
But if the reports are true that Chen does not want asylum, that he wants to negotiate his release and better conditions upon release with the Center from the safety of the American Embassy and stay in China? No. I wouldn't do that and in the interminable list of offenses I will be read by St. Peter being woolly in the knees will not be among them. You can't put any foreign country in that position.
Psst, Chen, what's the plan?
