Opinion Invisible Dissident

Senior US officials are in Beijing to negotiate a deal over the blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng,who escaped detention from a village in the eastern Shandong province last week,travelled to Beijing and took refuge in the US mission there.

Optimists hope a deal can be worked out before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrive in Beijing this week for the annual strategic and economic dialogue.

Pessimists,however,suggest domestic politics in Washington and Beijing could derail any potential deal. Neither President Barack Obama nor the Chinese communist leaders can afford to be seen at home as capitulating to the other.

Obama,facing re-election this year,is under fire from the Republican Party for being too soft on China. Meanwhile,the CCP is preparing for a once-in-a-decade leadership transition at the party congress later this year.

President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao will step down in favour of new leaders and the party’s powerful politburo and its standing committee will be reconstituted.

Any presumed weakness in the current negotiations will feed into the ongoing political jockeying within the CCP. It is also likely to inflame nationalist sentiment in China.

While the government media has put a lid on the story of Chen Guangcheng,the Internet sites are agog with speculation on how the dissident lawyer escaped custody and the kind of help he got from other human rights activists to travel to Beijing.

On the face of it,an American agreement with Beijing to let Chen and his immediate family leave for the US seems a reasonable solution. Chen,however,does not want asylum in the United States.

What he wants is freedom to pursue his legal work on human rights in China. Chen’s position makes it that much harder for Washington and Beijing to find a diplomatic solution.

South China Sea

If the issue of human rights has re-emerged as a bone of contention between Washington and Beijing this year,strategic tension between the two countries has begun to rise in the South China Sea.

What has been a war of words until now has acquired a military dimension as the US steps up its support to Manila,whose confrontation with Beijing in the South China Sea has escalated in recent weeks.

In July 2010,the US had claimed a national interest in the peaceful resolution of the territorial disputes and the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

Last November,the US announced the strengthening of its military presence in Asia and the reaffirmation of its political commitment to longstanding allies in the region.

That commitment to one of its treaty-allies,the Philippines,is now being demonstrated. Last week,US warships conducted a joint exercise with the Filipino navy despite warnings from Beijing.

This week,at a meeting of the top defence officials and diplomats of the two countries in Washington,Clinton announced the Obama administration’s decision to augment the naval capability of the Philippines.

While helping Manila stand up against Beijing,Washington insists that it does not take sides in the territorial dispute between the two in the South China Sea.

Two decades ago,Manila had compelled the US to close its large bases in the Philippines — the naval one at Subic Bay and the air force facility at Clark’s.

The wheel has turned full circle. The rise of Chinese power has now made Manila and other East Asian capitals seek out active military support from Washington.

Japan’s Role

Further complicating the Sino-US relationship is Washington’s determination to boost its military partnership with Tokyo. The Obama administration is also pressing Japan to play a larger role in the South China Sea and the Western Pacific.

The Chinese media have criticised Tokyo’s decision to transfer offshore patrol vessels to the Philippines and train Manila’s coast guard.

Chinese analysts accuse Tokyo of injecting itself into the South China Sea in order to improve its leverage with Beijing in the Sino-Japanese bilateral maritime territorial disputes.

Beijing also closely monitors the naval cooperation between Japan and India,which announced plans this week to deepen the maritime engagement between the two nations.

The writer is a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation,Delhi