Update  That one didn’t take long. Chen has left the Embassy with the US Ambassador, heading for a medical facility.

It obviously suited both sides to cut some sort of quick deal, including the Chinese expressing strong dissatisfaction with the US willingness to take Chen in, and (according to the FT account) noting that the US side has expressed ‘contrition’ and "promised to take measures to prevent a similar event from happening again".

That, depending on what if anything has been promised, contritely or otherwise,, could be a moderately embarrassing outcome for the Americans: "we are an island of freedom – just don’t try to get in!". Against that Hillary Clinton’s visit to Beijing can go ahead without this issue being the main story, a vital outcome for Obama (and indeed Hillary).

If Chen ends up leaving China for the USA, it could be better for the Chinese leadership than having him in the country as a photogenic symbol of opposition. Once outside he can be dismissed as someone cowardly who ‘ran away’…

* * * * *

Here is a piece I wrote for Telegraph Blogs on the different Shrekish layers involved in the flight of Chen Guangcheng to the sanctuary of the US Embassy in Beijing.

By the way, don’t you just hate the word ‘dissident’? It defines someone in terms of what s/he opposes (here communist one-party rule) rather than what s/he wants, and thereby subtly downgrades the cause. Here is the Guardian describing Chen as a ‘dissident physicist’. I recall with honour how back in 1984 the overweight FCO HR woman in flousy peasant-style clothes ticked me off for being argumentative when I told her how senior Embassy colleagues had dismissed my conversation with Yugoslav ‘dissidents’:

I left the post in 1984. Back at HQ I went along to Personnel to discuss my future. ‘You are getting a reputation for being argumentative,’ said the frumpy HR lady. ‘Wouldn’t you argue if you saw disaster looming but everyone else ignored it?’ I replied in some exasperation.

‘See, you’re arguing again,’ came the smug response.

I still remember this conversation so vividly, not least the supercilious but unimaginative female on the other side of the table. I pointed out to her that it had been annoying dealing with senior Embassy colleagues who instructed me to go out and talk to Yugoslav dissidents and get their devasting observations on the fecklessness of the Yugo-communists, but then could not spell when they wrote afterwards that these people were ‘obviously dissaffected’.

"I find that hard to believe", she sniffed.

Indeed.

Back to Chen:

You might ask why a host embassy does not simply smuggle such sanctuary-seekers out of the country. First, it is not that easy to do so: it took amazing preparation for the British embassy in Moscow famously to "exfiltrate" top KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky out of Moscow in 1985 under the noses of the Soviet authorities. More importantly, such a move would be a profound abuse of long-established codes of diplomatic privilege, and risk far-reaching retaliation from a furious host government, on a scale which would make normal diplomatic life for the embassy concerned impossible for a good time to come.

Similarly, host governments almost never storm an embassy to get back by force their errant citizen. Why bother? That citizen is going nowhere fast. And the new situation creates intriguing new opportunities for making difficult demands and stiffening existing positions.

What factors might influence how long he stays under US protection? It all comes down to Shrek’s layers:

A more productive way to look at the problem is via Shrek and onions: it will have many layers.

One layer is all about what happens to Chen Guangcheng himself. Another is the consequences of his new situation for his friends and family and supporters. Then there is the layer of what this episode might mean for wider moves towards or back from political freedom in China. And the layer of wider US and Western support for political freedom in China. And the layer of US/China bilateral trade deals, and Chinese support for the miserable eurozone. Did I mention tensions in the Korean peninsula and other Asian defence questions? And the layer of how to begin to tackle all these subjects and many more during the forthcoming visit of Hillary Clinton.

Not to forget the fat layer of domestic politics in both countries. Mitt Romney has been quick to urge President Obama to protect Chen Guangcheng, signalling that an outcome involving Chen being handed back to the unforgiving Chinese authorities will be a major US election Republican rallying cry. That is a cheap and predictable shot (and none the worse for that). It may help the Obama administration tell Beijing that for now Chen gets free board and lodging at the US taxpayers’ expense, allowing a more leisurely process to unfold as the two sides manoeuvre within and across different layers, maybe wrapping this problem up later as part of a wider inter-layer deal which can be presented by both as honourable.

Beijing too has its own political processes to manage in China’s seething online world. Whatever the outcome, the Communist leadership will not want to appear weak, the more so after so successfully belittling President Obama at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit. This is not the China of 1989 which could, perhaps, be lent on by wily Henry Kissinger and persuaded to let Fang Lizhi depart. This is a tough, confident country aspiring to global leadership, determined to show the world and its own people that it can not be pushed around, under any circumstances.

So what next? It could all be over quickly if the Chinese and Americans both want it to be over quickly, and can find a way to get Chen out of immediate US protection which does not cause either side – or Chen himself – any lasting embarrassment. It could drag on for years. Or at least until after the US Presidential elections.

One thing is for sure. Chen soon will be heartily sick of bland US embassy frozen food.