China Syndrome | Walter Russell Mead Via Meadia

China Syndrome | Via Meadia:
by Walter Russell Mead

 "No good deed goes unpunished; this must be what US Ambassador to China Gary Locke must have been thinking as a firestorm of criticism erupted over his embassy’s handling of the Chen Guangcheng case. Under great pressure, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner arriving for high profile talks with China’s leadership, the embassy and colleagues in the State Department including Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Kurt Campbell had negotiated a delicate deal with Chinese counterparts that Chen accepted. Negotiated with the involvement of top legal scholar Jerome Cohen, and based on a similar agreement reached in the case of another prominent dissident (Ai Weiwei), it looked like a big win for the US, a big step forward in US-China relations, and a solution to the problems of a man whose courageous struggle against injustice had won the admiration and sympathy of people around the world."

Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author ofSpecial Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The American Interest
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