Chen said an official from a central government bureau that handles citizens’ complaints has visited him in his Beijing hospital four times, including to take a statement last Thursday.

“After he took my statement, he said they would launch an investigation as long as there are facts, and that if there are facts about the illegal actions, then the issue definitely would be openly addressed,” Chen told The Associated Press in an interview Monday.

Chen said it remained to be seen how seriously Beijing would probe abuses by township and county officials, which date back to 2005 after Chen angered local authorities by documenting forced late-term abortions and sterilizations in his rural community.

“Will the investigation be thorough? That’s hard to say, so we’ll have to keep monitoring,” Chen said.

The State Bureau of Letters and Calls, as the complaints office is known, did not respond to attempts to seek comment. A man who answered the phone at the duty office of the bureau refused to provide a contact number for officials who handle media requests.

But even a preliminary investigation shows the extraordinary amount of attention Chen’s case is getting. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Chinese are believed to present petitions every year and only a fraction result in action.

Chen served four years in prison on what supporters said were fabricated charges and was then kept under house arrest with his wife, daughter and mother. Chen has described how besides assaulting him, officials would also beat up his wife and mother, at one point chasing his wife on the road, pulling her from a vehicle and then hitting her. His daughter was also subject to searches and harassment.

The mistreatment has often seemed extreme and personal, exposing the impunity local officials believe they have and Beijing’s unwillingness or inability to do anything about it.

For all its power, the authoritarian government relies on local officials to enforce policies so Beijing must be careful not to alienate them. However, with Chen’s case now an international issue, Beijing is either feeling compelled to act or it is seizing the opportunity to get rid of local officials it dislikes.

Unless a case becomes “a big issue or crisis for them, even though they may or may not like what the local authorities are doing, they don’t have a lot of reason to try to intervene,” said Dali Yang, a political scientist and faculty director at the University of Chicago Center in Beijing. “They don’t want to be seen as undermining local authorities because the local authorities, in doing something sometimes excessively, are also doing the bidding of the central government in maintaining stability.”

In a sign that the government doesn’t want Chen’s case to set a precedent or encourage others, Beijing has not publicized its meetings with the activist, and coverage by the domestic media, nearly all of which are state-owned, has been limited to dispatches by the official Xinhua News Agency and editorials criticizing the U.S.

Though Chen, his wife and two children are in the hospital under arrangements that may see them leave for the U.S. soon, others in his family remain at risk. Chen’s nephew has reportedly been detained after a clash he had with officials following the activist’s escape from house arrest.

Chen said in his talks with the visiting official that he also conveyed his wish that the guards stationed in his home and village by the local authorities be removed. He also asked the official to help with the paperwork for his and his family’s travel documents, and Chen said the official promised to handle it.

Chen and his supporters have tried to draw attention to his mistreatment for years. After Chen escaped from arrest in his rural home in Shandong province on April 22, he stayed in hiding in Beijing for several days during which he recorded a detailed video account of the abuse and his tormentors.

In the video, Chen named Zhang Jian, deputy party secretary in charge of politics and law of the township that oversees Chen’s village, as well as five other officials from several different departments, as being among his persecutors.

“More than a dozen men broke into my house to beat up my wife. They pushed my wife down on the floor, covered her with a quilt, and beat and kicked her for several hours,” he said in one example.

In the video, Chen appealed to Premier Wen Jiabao to punish authorities in the city of Linyi, saying that they sent 70 to 80 officials from county police, the local branch of the Communist Party and administrative agencies to his home “to loot and beat and harm us.”

He urged the premier to act in part to make clear whether the violations were the acts of local officials or ordered by the central government.

Chen has told U.S. Embassy officials and his lawyer, Li Jinsong, about the visits from the official. American officials have previously said that Chinese government staffers had begun talking to Chen about his mistreatment by officials in his home province, but had no further comment on Tuesday.

Li welcomed the government’s inquiry but said it would take time.

“Justice is often late, but it will not be absent,” Li told the AP.

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Associated Press writer Didi Tang contributed to this report.

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“Since the Chinese government has promised to safeguard my constitutionally provided rights and freedom and safety, I feel that they will fulfill their commitments because it is after all an agreement between two countries,” Chen said.

Chen sounded more relaxed and optimistic than on Friday morning before details of the deal were announced, when he told The Associated Press that he was in a “dangerous situation” because he had not been able to meet with American officials for two days.

The activist, who is in a Beijing hospital where he was taken to receive medical care and was joined by his wife and two children, said he has asked hospital staff to help him with the paperwork for him and his family to obtain travel documents.

“I entrusted the hospital with telling the relevant people or department that I have asked them to handle it on my behalf, because I am lying on the bed and I can’t move and my friends can’t come and see me, so what can I do? I can only ask them,” he said.

Chen suffered three broken bones in his foot when he was escaping from his rural village, a journey that involved scaling walls and making his way through fields and a forest, then being chased by security agents in Beijing. His foot is now in a cast.

Authorities have prevented American officials as well as Chen’s friends and supporters from visiting him in the hospital. Still, U.S. officials have spoken to Chen by phone every day, including Monday.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with NBC television’s “Meet the Press” broadcast Sunday that he believes Chen’s future is in the United States. Biden said U.S. officials “expect the Chinese to stick to that commitment.”

As part of the deal, China’s Foreign Ministry said Friday that Chen can apply for travel permits to study abroad. Chen has an invitation to study at New York University.

Chen, 40, spent most of the last seven years in prison or under house arrest in what was seen as retribution by local authorities for his activism against forced abortions and other official misdeeds. His wife, daughter and mother were confined at home with him, enduring beatings, searches and other mistreatment.

His escape from house arrest to the fortress-like U.S. Embassy last week put Washington at the center of a sensitive human rights case. It also came just days before Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrived in Beijing for high-level talks on trade tensions and global economic and political trouble spots.

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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.

On Saturday, Chen 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 Beijing apparently without meeting him.

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

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 wrath of local authorities who punished him with nearly seven years of prison and house arrest.

He made an improbable escape from his farmhouse in eastern China two weeks ago and sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. After negotiations between U.S. and Chinese officials, Chen emerged from the embassy under arrangements to stay in China that were supposed to guarantee his and his family’s safety. But he then changed his mind, prompting more talks that resulted in Friday’s tentative deal that would let him travel to the U.S. with his family for a university fellowship.

All this played out as Clinton, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and a slew of senior U.S. officials arrived for meetings on trade tensions and global economic and political trouble-spots. It also unfolded as Chinese President Hu Jintao and most of his senior leadership prepare to step aside for a younger generation of leaders — a time the Communist Party is acutely wary of challenges to its authority and usually uses to rein in critics.

Activists said that while Chen, his wife and children are likely to find sanctuary in the United States, it is unclear what will happen to his other relatives. Authorities have already detained Chen’s elder brother while his nephew is on the run after attacking local officials who raided his house apparently in search of Chen after his escape. Chen’s mother, who lived with the couple, has also been under constant surveillance.

If Chen leaves, the officials who mistreated him and his family will likely not be held accountable — something Chen asked for in a video statement he made while in hiding in Beijing before entering the U.S. Embassy.

“Chen’s story is not a triumph for China’s human rights, unfortunately,” said Wang Songlian, a Hong Kong-based researcher with the Chinese Human Rights Defenders. “Although Chen and his immediate family might gain freedom, his extended family is likely to be retaliated against. … None of those whose violence Chen exposed, or those who beat and detained Chen and his family, have been punished.”

There are concerns China would exact retribution on Chen’s supporters who aided his escape, as well as friends who later tried to get the message out about his fears for his safety or publicly urged him to flee to the United States. Two supporters who helped him escape were detained, then released, but placed under gag orders and close monitoring.

Others, like Chen’s friend Zeng Jinyan, who — at great risk to herself — publicized Chen’s worries about leaving the embassy Wednesday, have since been barred from speaking to the media and placed under house arrest. Under similar restrictions is Teng Biao, a rights lawyer who repeatedly called Chen imploring him to flee the country, then published a transcript of their phone conversations online.

“They (the authorities) will certainly settle scores with them later,” Teng told Chen, referring to the two supporters who aided Chen’s escape.

Some activists say local officials who have been watching dissidents in their own jurisdictions might beef up monitoring and restrictions on them to prevent them from attempting copycat escapes into diplomatic compounds.

“One guess is that they will learn a lesson from this experience and be stricter in guarding and monitoring similar key figures and take even harder measures against them,” said Mo Zhixu, a liberal-minded author and Chen supporter.

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LI JINSONG, Chen’s lawyer, paints a more optimistic picture of what he imagines the activist’s life might be like if he stayed in China:

“The power of those gangster-like officials who once persecuted Chen Guangcheng, like the city party secretary and public security bureau director in Shandong, can by no means challenge the power of the central government or continue to hurt Chen Guangcheng. So I think his personal safety has absolute protection. And his freedom, within his regular life, is guaranteed too. I mean, for the family to stay together, freely work and freely live their life, there should be no problem. But for him to accept media interviews and freely defend human rights and receive petitioners, I don’t think he really has total freedom to do those things.”

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AI WEIWEI, dissident artist:

“I think the U.S. side has made efforts on this issue but they probably don’t wish to see this issue stretch on or become more complicated. … Of course for him personally, by running to the U.S. Embassy he is looking for some kind of protection. But his is not an isolated incident; it is tied into China-U.S. relations. And regardless of what happens, both sides will pursue their own interests. If the family’s security can be ensured and they can live safely, I believe Chen Guangcheng would still be willing to live in China. But if he doesn’t trust any of this — and he has enough reason not to trust them, because a lot of people’s situations are not good — then of course we can only see how things develop.”

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LIU SHASHA, an activist who tried several times to visit Chen in the past year while he was still under house arrest, says he should stay to keep fighting:

“We worked so hard and suffered so many beatings in order for Guangcheng to be able to come out and work together with us. We hoped that Guangcheng could freely walk in his hometown, in his motherland. Not for him to be forced into exile, to leave the prison of his home for the spiritual prison of being barred from his homeland. A free Guangcheng must first be free in his own country!”

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HU JIA, fellow activist and a close friend, said earlier this week before Chen left the embassy that if Chen left the country the injustice he suffered would go unpunished:

“Even if his family — that is, his wife, mother and children — were able to travel with him to the U.S., there would be no one to pursue those past injustices. In other words, the abuse and persecution he suffered would have been for nothing. Those criminal government officials would continue to act in an unfettered way, above the law. They would not have to shoulder any responsibility for their crimes. I feel that the Chen Guangcheng incident should be seen as an important opportunity, so I think there should be no rush, he should not hastily go to the United States, because from what I understand from meeting with him, I think that that is also not his personal desire and it’s not what we think is the best way for him either.”

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YU JIE, a dissident writer and friend of Chen’s who left China for exile in the United States last year after being detained and tortured by Chinese authorities, says he supports Chen’s decision to leave:

“It is a better choice for him if he and his family are able to go to America. He has already left the embassy, and I think that was a very dangerous decision. I think the American officials have done a bad job. They should be aware that the danger that Chen Guangcheng faces in the future is very large. They should not have let him leave the embassy. … It’s a sign of the softness of Obama’s attitude toward China. He has placed trade above human rights. One cannot blame Chen Guangcheng for changing his mind because in the days that he was in the embassy he was not able to talk to his friends to obtain more information, so on his own it would have been difficult for him to make an accurate assessment.”

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HUANG QI, a veteran activist who runs a rights monitoring group in the western province of Sichuan, says Chen is just one of many people in China who need the international community’s support:

“We believe that in today’s China, what happens to the millions of rights defending petitioners, the Falun Gong practitioners, the religious sufferers, and the political dissidents is still worthy of our in-depth attention. In this huge group of victims there are a lot of people who are still suppressed by the authorities, they are also in urgent need of international attention. Only when the whole society pays attention to the human rights situation in China, particularly long-term concern for the victims at the lowest levels of society, toward the weak ones who have no rights, no influence, no fame, only then can one truly promote the in-depth development of China’s human rights movement and improve the rights situation.”

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LIU XIAOYUAN, a prominent rights lawyer in eastern China’s Jiangxi province who has represented many dissidents including Ai Weiwei:

“This incident should not have happened in the first place. If China is really a country with rule of law, then how could a local government use illegal tactics to hold a person under house arrest for so long? This incident might prompt high-level officials in charge of so-called ‘stability maintenance’ to stop further restricting activists after they have been released from prison, because this will generate public attention and the activists will escape and seek help from foreign embassies. I hope the authorities will learn these lessons from this incident.”

However, Hu said Tuesday that the two police officers who questioned him in Beijing acknowledged that Chen, as well as two other activists who helped him flee his guarded farmhouse in eastern China, did not act illegally.

“They are all free citizens,” Hu quoting the police officers as saying. “For them to come to Beijing and so on, there is nothing illegal about it. They are free to do so. They did not do anything wrong, they have no legal trouble. We just want to understand the situation and verify it.”

Beijing police had no immediate response to a faxed request for comment.

Hu was questioned for 24 hours over the weekend. One of the two supporters who was detained after helping Chen flee, Guo Yushan, was released Monday. Guo is a Beijing scholar and rights advocate who hosted and aided Chen in the capital.

He Peirong, a Nanjing activist and Chen supporter who drove a getaway car taking the blind activist out of his home province of Shandong, remained missing, friends said.

The police acknowledgment is an indication that Chen’s troubles with the authorities have primarily been about revenge by local leaders who were angered by his exposing of forced abortions.

His treatment by local authorities had seemed especially bitter and personal. Even after he served four years in prison on charges his supporters say were fabricated, local officials kept him and his wife confined at home since his release in September 2010. They did so despite lacking any legal basis, prevented outsiders from visiting the family and occasionally beat him and his wife up.

Burly men patrolling the village and stationed on a main road leading into the community have beaten up would-be visitors to Chen’s house, thrown stones at reporters and threatened diplomats.

Central authorities had not shown much inclination to stop the authorities in Shandong province’s Linyi city, which oversees Chen’s village of Dongshigu. But the Chinese government has a long history of ignoring its own laws.

“The fact is that the Chinese central government of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao passively or actively condoned, if not outright encouraged local government officials and security forces in Shandong to victimize Chen Guangcheng and his family for years,” said Human Rights Watch researcher Phelim Kine.

“The unlawful confinement and abuse endured by Chen Guangcheng and his family and now his subsequent escape only heightens justifiable domestic and international concerns about the state of rule of law in China,” Kine said in emailed comments.

Chen angered local authorities after documenting forced late-term abortions and sterilizations and other abuses in his rural community, but he was sentenced for allegedly instigating an unrelated attack on government offices and organizing a group of people to disrupt traffic.

Chen’s documentation and the international media attention it drew at the time had prompted the National Population and Family Planning Commission to investigate. The agency validated Chen’s claims and said in late 2005 that some Linyi officials had been punished, with some of them removed from their posts and others detained.

However, once Chen started getting in trouble with the local officials during the ensuing year, the national agency looked the other way.

“We have no information about Mr. Chen Guangcheng,” agency spokesman Hao Hongcai said in July 2006. “This issue now belongs to the local authorities.”