北京真热，但并不是所有人都能吃国际牌的冰淇淋"Not all dissident cases can become intern

China dissidents fear things will get 'worse and worse' after Chen case

Carlos Barria / Reuters

Men guarding building G of Chaoyang Hospital, where blind rights activist Chen Guangcheng was reported to be staying, eat ice-cream at the entrance of the hospital in Beijing Saturday.

By msnbc.com news services

No matter whether China makes a rare concession to allow legal activist Chen Guangcheng to leave the country with his family, other dissidents say they don't expect a broader easing of controls.

Authorities may choose to tighten the screws on prominent critics to prevent them from taking encouragement from Chen's case to challenge the leadership. 

On Saturday, Chen, who fled house arrest and took refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, was believed to be still in the hospital, where he was taken to get medical care joined by his wife and two children.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton -- in Beijing this past week for annual talks -- left China Saturday, leaving Chen behind despite his reported comments that he wanted to leave the country on her plane. She apparently did not meet him in person.

A symbol in China's civil rights movement, Chen may be able to leave to study in the United States in the coming days or weeks under still-evolving arrangements announced Friday by Washington and Beijing to end a weeklong diplomatic standoff over his case.

If negotiations are successful, Chen Guangcheng's family will come to the U.S. on a student visa where he would study at NYU. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

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It was unclear if the Chens submitted passport applications, as the Chinese Foreign Ministry said they could Friday, to enable them to travel. His cell phone constantly rang unanswered. 

The blind activist's flight to safety in the embassy has provided a much-needed morale boost for a dissident community that over the last year has been debilitated by the government's massive security crackdown aimed at preventing Arab-style democratic uprisings. Dozens of activists, rights lawyers, intellectuals and others have been detained, questioned and even in some cases, tortured. 

Blind activist: What did he do to rile Beijing? 

The turn of events for Chen, while welcomed by most activists and dissidents, is seen only as an individual victory and not likely to pave the way for improvements in China's attitude toward its critics. 

"I think that after the Chen Guangcheng incident, the situation for us will just become worse and worse, because in today's society government power has no limits," said Liu Yi, an artist and Chen supporter who was assaulted Thursday by men he thinks were plainclothes police while he attempted to visit Chen in hospital.

 

Liu Feiyue, a veteran activist who runs a rights monitoring network in the central province of Hubei, noted the importance of U.S. involvement in Chen's case. "This is only an individual case. Because it turned into a China-U.S. incident, the U.S. put a lot of pressure on China, which is why the authorities made a concession to allow Chen Guangcheng to study overseas," he said. 

"Not all dissident cases can become international issues," Liu Feiyue said. 

Chen, a self-taught legal activist, is best known for exposing forced abortions and sterilizations in his community in a scandal that prompted the central government to punish some local officials. His activism earned him the w