U.S. officials: We're still trying to help China activist Chen Guangcheng

Updated at 7:49 a.m. Eastern.

(CBS/AP) BEIJING - U.S. officials said Thursday they are still trying to help a blind Chinese activist who says he fears for his family's safety, and denied he was pressured to leave the American Embassy to resettle inside China.

Chen Guangcheng is at the center of a diplomatic dispute between Washington and Beijing that is especially sensitive for the Obama administration because it does not want to appear unwilling to press China on human rights issues during an election year.

After fleeing persecution by local officials in his rural town and seeking refuge in the embassy in Beijing for six days, Chen left Wednesday to get treatment for a leg injury at a Beijing hospital and to be reunited with his family. U.S. officials said the Chinese government had agreed to resettle him in a university town of his choice.

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Chris Johnson, who until two weeks ago was the CIA's top China analyst, told CBS News that the deal was likely to break down and was therefore a mistake for the Americans to make.

"In terms of trying to somehow negotiate with the Chinese a means to guarantee his safety within China, there's just too much chance that the Chinese regime would renege and then the administration would look terrible," Johnson said.

Chen initially said he had assurances that he would be safe in China — which is what U.S. officials said he wanted — but hours later said he feared for his family's safety unless they are all spirited abroad.

Speaking on the phone Thursday to Britain's Sky News from his hospital room, Chen said he was unable to obtain information from his network of supporters while inside the U.S. Embassy, but once he left he learned that Chinese authorities had allegedly installed surveillance equipment and an electric fence around his home. (Click here for Sky's interview with Chen)

"Now, I know more, and I have changed my mind" about remaining in China, he told Sky's Holly Williams, who tells "CBS This Morning" that Chen sounded as though he had genuinely become very concerned for the safety of his family.

Chen told Sky he didn't blame U.S. officials for his predicament, but added that if he could speak to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or President Obama directly, he would ask them to do something concrete to protect him now.

Chen said on Wednesday through friends that he had felt pressured to leave the embassy.

U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke told a news conference that he could say "unequivocally" that Chen was never pressured to leave, a point he reiterated on Thursday. Locke says Chen left the embassy after talking twice on the telephone with his wife, who was waiting at the hospital.

"We asked him was he ready to leave. He jumped up very excited and said 'let's go' in front of many many witnesses," Locke said.

Locke said U.S. officials had spoken twice to Chen Thursday and were continuing to try and assess his needs.

A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Thursday that further contacts with Chen and his wife show that "his view of what the best thing for him and his family may be changing."

The official said the U.S. side was seeking to find out if Chen and his wife had a change of heart about his earlier decision to stay in China.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry signaled its unhappiness with the entire affair, demanding that the U.S. apologize for giving Chen sanctuary at the embassy. (Watch the CBS Evening News report at left on China's displeasure with the way the U.S. handled this case.)

"What the U.S. side should do now is neither to continue misleading the public and making every excuse to shift responsibility and conceal its wrongdoing, nor to interfere in the domestic affairs of China," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said late Wednesday in a statement that was a response to comments from Clinton praising the deal on Chen.

The dispute overshadowed the opening of annual talks Thursday between China and the United States attended by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who said in a speech that China must protect human rights, in remarks that rejected Beijing's criticism of the U.S. for getting involved in Chen's case.

Chen, 40, became an international human rights figure and inspiration to many ordinary Chinese after running afoul of local government officials for exposing forced abortions carried out as part of China's one-child policy. He served four years in prison on what supporters said were fabricated charges, then was kept under house arrest with his wife, daughter and mother, with the adults often being roughed up by officials and his daughter searched and harassed.

Blinded by childhood fever but intimately familiar with the terrain of his village, Chen slipped from his guarded farmhouse in eastern China's Shandong province at night on April 22. He made his way through fields and forest, along roads and across a narrow river to meet the first of several supporters who helped bring him to Beijing and the embassy. It took three days for his guards to realize he was gone.

[littleredtop]

This blind guy is a whack job and we must distance ourselves from him immediately. The last thing we need here is another dizzy dick to further disrupt our society.

[wfw3536]

This is such a laugh, now after the State Dept gives up this brave human rights fighter they are working to get him back. Oh the incompetence of Mrs Clinton and the State Dept. Where is Obama speaking out on this issue and standing up the China for a change?

[melpol12]

There are over 100 million Chinese that want the chance to emigrate to the land of the free and the home of the brave. They could revitalize a nation that is on the decline and create a new and brilliant managerial class. The blind man has this vision and he should be allowed to board the plane with Hillary leading the way for millions of freedom seekers to follow.

[littleredtop]

If they want to come here let them come up through Mexico like everyone else.

[Resin-Smoker]

One thing that isn't mentioned in any of the stories I've glanced at thus far is... WHY ?

-Why does Guangcheng need US protection?

-Why is the US interested in helping Guangcheng and in doing so what does the US gov have to gain?

-Why is China upset over this, after all it's one man out of 2-3 billion? For the amount of money and time the US gov is blowing on this guy, you'd think that China would be tinkled pink that we're one again "spinning our wheels".

-Why should anyone care about this one man, who until ealrier this week was just another faceless nobody?

Beyond all the media hype, propaganda and misdirection... nothing matters until thoses question have been answered.

[josephp5]

All your questions have obvious answers. Why does he need protection? Because China is angry at him and wants to make him disappear. Why is China angry? Because he publicly disagreed with China's one child policy, and they can't allow him to get away with public disagreement, or else others may start to dissent. Why should anyone care? Well, the US purports to be about freedom and rights, so that is why the US should care. The question, of course, is whether the US is more about freedom and rights or if that is second to keeping our trading partner China happy. Sadly, it looks like the US just wants this to go away so we will do nothing.

[Nikos_Retsos]

Let's for a moment put the Chen Guangcheng saga in context! I don't see any "U.S. officials trying to help" the Bahrainian human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja languishing in prison currently on a hunger strike, or for Bahrainian doctors convicted to 15 years in prison for treating injured anti-regime protesters! Obviously, Bahrain is our own foster child autocracy, while China is our own global competitor and Communist state. Would Chen Guangcheng have become a global icon in the Western media if he was a Bahraini? Not a chance! Fortunately for us, Chen Guangcheng give us a chance to advertise ourselves as pillars of human rights across the world, and plaster his case over the labyrinth of worse human rights abuses by our allies. Do we fool the world? Not really. The anti-U.S. hostility across the globe tops every other nation, and we own it!

Sure Chen Guangcheng wants to come to the U.S. He sees other Chinese become wealthy, and knows that he will be poor for life if he stays there. But since our propaganda has promoted him into as a famous pseudo-lawyer, even though his education is not known to be above elementary level, he can easily become a dean of Harvard's or Princeton's law schools with CIA grants. And he can certainly bag a $ 10 million book deal with a publisher as soon as he get off the plane in New York! That is why he wants now to jump on Hillary Clinton's plane and come here to cash in now - before the bubbles of his artificial high publicity burst out! Nikos Retsos, retired professor

[tmn]

Can't he see the US is trying to help?

[infantryman1968]

U.S. officials: We're still trying to help China activist Chen Guangcheng


LOL!


But not too much. Obama still has allot of votes to buy so.......

Can you float us a loan?

[Rafterman11]

Typical 'con. Act without understanding or even caring about the consequences.

Thank God we have a grownup in the WH now and not a nutbag reactionary.

[I-C-Warming]

Here's the thing. We don't really care. China is a place we can make some money and too bad if they treat their citizens badly. Why should we worry about human rights for a bunch of Asian people who don't even speak English? If they want to put Chen in jail and beat up his family, what difference does that make? That is how they treat thousands of dissidents and we never say anything, but this guy is somehow different because he is blind? Come on. It's about the money, stupid. It will be years before they take over the whole world, so just shut up and ka-ching $$$.

[bencastct]

Let me get this straight.
This dissedent causes a "crisis"
Both the US and China are putting "options" on the table.
And the dissedent dosen't want to do this or that ot the other thing.
Then this man is making fools of both China and the USA.
Now think of the "options"

[tmn]

A job at Wal*Mart China?