Current media concentration on the potential problems created by the escape of Mr. Chen Guangcheng is rather curious. We should consider that Mr. Chen's career as a human rights advocate is similar to certain leaders of the anti-abortion movement in the USA, though today's Financial Times mentions other efforts he has made to help farmers. Mr. Chen's advocacy has mainly been centered around fighting to legalize births to people who have broken the national law limiting families to one child (http://www.nytimes.com/...). Operation Rescue's leaders opposed abortion and have fought for the "rights" of the unborn over the rights of women to decide to have an abortion. The main difference in the two is that abortion is still legal in the USA and in China, but that having more than one child is illegal in China. Thus the human "right" that Chen is fighting for is for people to break a law that limits families to only one child. We might equate this to the career of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, known also as "Dr. Death." See (http://en.wikipedia.org/...) Assisted suicide is illegal in the USA, as is suicide, but Dr. Kevorkian believed that people have the right to end their lives and so decided to risk arrest and loss of his license to practice medicine to provide people with the means to achieve that right. However, there was no international movement to support Dr. Kevorkian, the US government did not come to his aid.
The contrast between the famous demonstration in Tiananmen Square and the resulting government repression in 1989 and the current repression of Occupy Wall Street in the USA is also of interest. What is the difference? Why was it so crucial for the Chinese government not to stop those demonstrations which were illegal, but it is ok for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations to be repressed. Usually the excuse we read why the Occupy people are attacked, their camps broken up and the protestors arrested is that their camps produced unsanitary conditions. Is sanitation more important that liberty?
In April 1989, spurred by the death of deposed Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, mass gatherings and protests took place in and around Tiananmen Square. The movement lasted seven weeks after Hu's death on 15 April. Party authorities declared martial law on 20 May, but no military action took place until 4 June. Contrary to popular perceptions of the event, "the violence" or repression, did not occur during the protests on the actual square, but in the streets of Beijing, as the People's Liberation Army is thought to have proceeded through the city to Tiananmen Square, using live fire, to clear the square of protestors. There is no actual proof of any deaths only claims and claims of thousands of arrests. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/.... Those supposedly responsible for calling in troops read like a Who's Who of China's recent government leaders: Major roles in sending the army to the protesters were played by Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian, Wang Zhen, Bo Yibo, Peng Zhen, Li Peng, and later, Yang Shangkun.