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 "It's an inevitability of history, whether the party likes it or not," Chen said. "Once the people are waking up, change is coming for sure."
The 41-year-old is receiving a human rights award in Washington on Tuesday. He spoke to The Associated Press about his homeland's future and on adapting to life in America, after enduring years of abuse at the hands of officials in his rural community in eastern China.
Chen's campaign for rights of the disabled and against forced abortions had long made him a cause celebre among rights activists, but his daring escape in April to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing triggered a diplomatic crisis and catapulted him into the international limelight. The upshot of frantic backroom negotiations was that China allowed him to come to the U.S. to study law at New York University.
The public attention has ebbed somewhat, but his passion has not.
Despite assurances from the Chinese government that the persecution he and his family faced at the hands of local officials in Shandong province would be investigated and the results made public, Chen complains that so far nothing has happened.
"Not only that, but officials have actually been promoted. The persecution of my family members continues," said Chen, speaking through an interpreter.
While Chen says persecution of his elder brother has eased, his nephew Chen Kegui was sentenced in December to three years in prison, accused of attacking officials with a knife. Chen says it was a clear case of self-defense, as the officials had barged into the house at night and beat him.
"If the party can't respect basic common sense, how can you expect it to respect the law?" said Chen, adding that the nephew has been denied proper legal counsel and still had not seen his own family members. "The entire trial was conducted in a black box."
The U.S. says it urged China not to exact further retribution against Chen's family members, and Beijing said it would abide by Chinese law. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond for comment on the case late Monday.
Chen suffered bitterly for his long legal crusade, which embarrassed and angered local officials. He served four years in prison only to be released into an abusive and illegal house arrest. He escaped by clambering over rugged 13-foot-high rock walls and tumbling into a neighbor's pig sty. The dissident suffered three broken bones in his foot but managed to reach Beijing.
Chen says he feels very good about life in the U.S., living in faculty-provided accommodations in Manhattan's Washington Square with his wife, Yuan Weijing, 7-year-old daughter, Kesi, and 9-year-old son, Kerui, who attend public schools. In China, the family had been forced to live apart.
"American people are very kind to me and very warm," he said. "They have a strong sense of justice."
Chen spends alternate days studying English language and law. His legal studies started with America's Declaration of Independence and have since covered the U.S. Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act
-- the culmination of an unusual path to learning the law.
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 Chen was blinded by fever in infancy and is largely self-taught. He describes his education as back-to-front: learning from life and the society around him before embarking on his formal education. Because of his disability, he only began elementary schooling at age 18.
He values the creativity that American education encourages and is scathing of schooling in China, where, he contends, "they provide the answers for you, and they ask you to memorize it. Over time that hampers your sense of judgment, and what's right and wrong."
Chen says he eventually wants to return to China, although that isn't on his mind just yet. He stays in touch with his relatives back in the village, including his 79-year-old mother, who he says is happier now that he's managed to leave the country.
"She was always heartbroken with us being beaten," he said.
Like others Chinese rights activists who have left the country, it could be tough for Chen to get permission to return. He's a stinging critic of authoritarian rule and has now achieved world renown, perhaps only surpassed by jailed Chinese Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.
On Tuesday Chen will be feted at a ceremony on Capitol Hill by the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, named for the late U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, a prominent rights advocate.
"The case of Chen Guangcheng and the degree of fear and paranoia that this massive regime has of this single brave man is an indication of how afraid they are, of the simple power of the truth he's speaking. It absolutely terrifies them," said the organization's president, Katrina Lantos Swett.
Access to the Internet and social media -- albeit censored -- has offered new avenues for people to express their views in China, but the communist party maintains a political monopoly. It has presided over an economic boom that has lifted hundreds of millions from poverty.
Chen maintains the economic gains are a smoke screen: He says wealth is unevenly spread and the party is not as strong as it appears to outsiders. He says the party relies on intimidation to maintain power and is losing its capability to deceive the people.
"I believe when the time comes and I go back, China will be changing," he said.
[Associated
Press; By MATTHEW PENNINGTON]
Copyright 2013 The Associated
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