It's safe to make one forecast about the unfolding saga of Chen Guangcheng: it will not be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Indeed, it cannot be. Either the blind Chinese activist lawyer and his family will be hard done by, or the leadership in Beijing will have to battle the party cadres in Chen's home of Shandong, or Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will come in for huge flak from the American right for bungling a delicate bit of diplomacy (actually, that last is going to happen, no matter what). This issue has got so far out of hand that someone is going to lose out – and probably lose big. Both Washington and Beijing are going through a change of leaderships (in their different ways) at the moment: this affair adds to the stress. The big Sino-American event this week was meant to be the annual “strategic and economic dialogue” in Beijing. Other Chinese dissidents have gone to America, and Chen should be supported if he wants to leave – he will certainly not be safe in Shandong anymore. But despite what some of the more overblown commentary suggests, this story is no longer about him alone. The more one looks at this issue, the messier and more intractable it seems to get. — Excerpts from The Guardian editorial __
