(Reuters) – Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng left the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday in Beijing “of his
own volition” after being there for six days, state media said on Wednesday, as China denounced the United States for interfering in its internal
affairs.
guard outside the U.S. embassy in Beijing April 30, 2012. The United States faces a tense week in China as high-level talks
on trade and global hot spots like Iran and North Korea open in the shadow of a blind Chinese activist's bold escape from
house arrest to seek U.S. protection in Beijing. REUTERS/Petar Kujundzic
The blind lawyer, Chen
Guangcheng, 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 he 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.
A brief report by the Xinhua news agency
broke China’s media silence. A senior U.S. official confirmed that Chen was out of the embassy.
“Chen Guangcheng has
arrived at a medical facility in Beijing where he will receive medical treatment and be reunited with his family,” said the
official who requested anonymity.
China’s Foreign Ministry said it was extremely unhappy the embassy had taken Chen
in.
“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,” ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in a
statement carried by Xinhua.
“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.”
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.
The annual talks give Washington a
chance to push China to pressure Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programmes, halting Syria‘s crackdown on unarmed protesters and reducing tensions over
disputed territories in the South China Sea.
But Beijing has been reluctant to back tougher international sanctions
against Tehran and Pyongyang. It also worries that U.S. efforts to strengthen its presence in Asia have emboldened countries
disputing Chinese claims in the South China Sea.
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.
(Writing by Michael Martina and Chris Buckley; Editing by Nick Macfie)
