Chen Guangchen entered into this undertaking with a naive belief in the central government. He must have thought that his political problems were limited to Linyi and/or Shandong, and if he could get out of there in a public way, he and his family would be able to move on, or at least avoid continued beatings/harsh restrictions. He must have known that nobody outside the government power hierarchy in the PRC can guarantee the safety of a Chinese citizen in government custody, and that the US would be powerless to prevent retribution against his family. The fact that he was not prepared in advance for these threats is reminiscent of petitioner culture, and their disillusionment when they discover the basic indifference of the central government.

Chen wasn’t using the US as a way to traverse between one faction and another inside Chinese government, like Wang Lijun — as it turns out (and many would have predicted this), the central government is as wolfish as the thugs in Linyi, and just as interested in punishing him for speaking against gov’t policy. So he’s stuck, now, dependent on public and media attention for self-protection. That’ll go on for just a little while, perhaps a bit longer if the US Republican party tries to make this an issue in the 2012 election, but it can’t have been his strategy from the beginning.

I say all this in part because it’s upsetting to see the Ch./Eng twitter fill up with people talking crap about the US government role. That’s going to accomplish nothing but closing the gates in the future. The US State Department went out on a limb for Chen, and whether or not it turned out, I for one haven’t seen any argument for what they should’ve or could’ve done differently.