The Mysterious Case of Chen Guangcheng

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So what really happened in the case of the Chinese dissident lawyer Chen Guangcheng? A week ago he walked into the American embassy in Beijing asking for asylum, and then, following a week of tense negotiations, he departed after the Chinese government promised he could return home and continue his education. But the deal apparently fell apart almost instantly. “Only hours later,” says Paul Richter in the LA Times, “he began to complain that he had been pressured to remain in China.” U.S. diplomats, Richter reports, were “stunned at the turn of events,” while Bob Fu, a friend of Chen’s, said the United States “has abandoned Mr. Chen.” For his part, Chen now says his “fervent hope” is to leave China on Hillary Clinton’s plane. So what happened? Did the Americans sell him out?

This just doesn’t seem very likely, even if you think the worst of the Obama administration. As Robert Wright says:

The Obama folks may be cynical, but they’re smart enough to have known that if Chen walked into a bait-and-switch, that would be a big problem not just for him but for them. It doesn’t make sense, even in Machiavellian terms, that they’d have wanted to seriously mislead him.

That sounds right to me. Even if you look at this in the most cynical political way, Obama would have known perfectly well that he couldn’t sell out Chen without the entire world knowing about it immediately. And that, of course, would open him up to exactly the kind of opportunistic jeering that Mitt Romney so drearily delivered on cue today (“This is a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration”).

But if that’s not it, what did happen? Wright points us to some speculation from Walter Russell Mead

At some point one or more internal police officials either got to his wife or got to Chen after he’d left the embassy and told him in the most bloodcurdling and alarming way that he was under threat, that they would be watching and waiting, and that his wife and family would meet very unpleasant fates once the security forces got him back out of Beijing. And they would have told him in a very chilling way that he was not to tell anyone about this little conversation….After that kind of talk, a weary and blind man, much more worried about the safety of his family than about anything that would happen to him, might well change his mind about staying in China — and might also need to give a good reason for the change of mind without mentioning any recent encounters with the security forces. This is a completely speculative theory with no evidence, and other explanations are possible. But it fits the known facts.

Maybe. In any case, it’s the most plausible story I’ve heard so far. Stay tuned.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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