Chen doesn't want to come to America, according to some reports.
According to those reports we did negotiate his continued safe...safer stay in China. According...the Center has promised not to beat him and his wife anymore ("When did you stop beating his wife?" Get it?), to let him move to a place remote from where he was house-arrested, and to let him study law at university.
If true, we may question Chen's choice of a profession--and Secretary Clinton's. The Americans should not have been negotiating on behalf of a foreign national with that foreign national's government, i.m.o. That is strictly an internal affair. Asylum is a different thing. People defect all the time, there are well-established diplomatic protocols for that. Secondly, does Clinton trust the Chinese government to adhere to their promises? I wouldn't, but then I'm no diplomat.
What will happen if China reneges? We, meaning the Americans, can't enforce the promises, what are we going to do, sue them? It seems to me this is beyond just a realistic distrust of the Chinese government. If this is true, then the Chinese government has negotiated this under some pressure from the American government. Pressure over an internal Chinese matter. They see it that way, even I see it that way. It is humiliating, and not just for humiliation-hypersensitive Chinese.
Some years ago in America a guy went slightly nuts at his bank and took the bank president hostage. Taped a rifle to the bank president's neck and taped his, the gunman's, hand around the trigger. Brilliantly nutty move. The police couldn't do anything. The gunman negotiated: if you promise not to arrest me I'll unwrap. The police agreed. And when the gunman unwrapped they arrested him. Perfectly legal for the police to do that. They can't be held to the "benefit of the bargain" under those circumstances.
