Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Actor Richard Gere, right, puts an arm around Chen Guangcheng after the Chinese dissident was awarded the Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize in Washington on Tuesday. Next to Chen is his wife, Yuan Weijing, and adjacent to her is Lantos' widow, Annette Lantos.

BEIJING — Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng urged the United States to not put business interests ahead of Beijing's human rights abuses and to help end the Communist Party's "rule of thieves" at an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., Tuesday.

"It is clearly difficult to shift attention away from issues of finance and the economy," Chen told the award ceremony's attendees in translated remarks read out in English by actor and noted Tibet advocate Richard Gere. "[But] remember that placing undue value on material life will cause a deficit in spiritual life."

The 41-year-old self-taught lawyer also urged the United States to hold fast to its founding principles such as democracy, human rights and freedom of speech when dealing with China.

Chen's words could well be making some American officials squirm. As the Chinese and U.S. economies become more interdependent, Beijing has applied pressure for the two countries to put aside human rights issues and focus on mutual business interests.

China is the United States' second-largest trading partner behind Canada, and growth has it poised to move into the top spot. Goods and services trade between the countries totaled $539 billion in 2011, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Chen is best known for his daring nighttime escape from 19 months of house detention in his native Shandong province in April. Despite breaking his leg during his dash for freedom, he managed to travel some 300 miles to Beijing, where he sought refuge at the U.S. Embassy.

His escape to U.S. custody sparked a diplomatic maelstrom that eventually led to his negotiated release from the embassy to a Beijing hospital. Chen and his family were later granted permission to travel to New York University, where he could continue his legal studies out of the Chinese media spotlight.

Acquaintances 'have been threatened'

Chen accepted the Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize, named after the only Holocaust survivor to have served in the U.S. Congress. Lantos' background had a "profound resonance" in his heart as he remembered his experience, that of his relatives in China and that of other human rights advocates still in detention, Chen said.

"Recently, many friends and neighbors who I have been in touch with by phone have been taken into custody by the authorities for questioning," Chen said. "They have been threatened and made to describe what our conversations have been about."

Chen's nephew Chen Kegui was sentenced last month to three years in prison after he was found guilty of assaulting local officials with a knife. The family says that officials barged into Chen Kegui's home and that he had been acting in self-defense.

In sheltering Chen and helping to negotiate his exit to New York, the U.S. government outraged Beijing, which roundly rejects foreign involvement in its domestic affairs.

Chen's frequent speeches and interviews in the United States regularly make news among China watchers and human rights advocates, but in China his words are blocked and censored.

On China's popular Twitter-like service, Weibo, Chen's name has long been blocked and mention of his award Tuesday generated no comments.

Beijing is likely to have bristled at Chen receiving an American peace prize. State media gave no attention to his award and the Foreign Ministry did not issue a statement on it.

Courtesy U.S. Embassy Beijing Press Office

Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng is seen holding the hand of U.S. ambassador to China Gary Locke, right, in this photo released by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday.

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Updated at 10:50 p.m. ET: BEIJING -- In a visit to China on Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cautioned China to protect human rights, the Associated Press reported.

Without mentioning Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident who sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing for six days, Clinton said, “all governments have to answer to our citizens’ aspirations for dignity and the rule of law and that no nation can or should deny those rights.”  

Only hours earlier, U.S. officials said they had extracted from the Chinese government a promise that Chen would join his family and be allowed to start a new life in a university town in China, safe from the rural authorities who had abusively held him in prison and house arrest for nearly seven years.

In her remarks, Clinton did not mention Chen by name, although she had spoken with him hours before when he left the embassy. In a statement she welcomed the resettlement as one that “reflected his choices and our values.”

This came after an interview Chen gave to the Associated Press on Wednesday from a hospital room in Beijing where he was taken for medical treatment, during which he said a U.S. official told him that Chinese authorities had threatened to beat his wife if he did not leave the embassy. He said he feared for his safety and wanted to leave.

"Nobody from [the] embassy is here … I don't understand why. They promised to be here," he told Channel 4 News.

Chen also told NBC News that he asked the U.S. to take concrete steps to guarantee his safety.

The State Department denied much of the AP's account of what Chen said. 

"At no time did any U.S. official speak to Chen about physical or legal threats to his wife and children. Nor did Chinese officials make any such threats to us," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told NBC News.  

Chen was told his family would be sent back home if he stayed in the embassy, she said. 

China censors 'Shawshank' as Clinton heads to Beijing amid dissident drama

"At every opportunity, he expressed his desire to stay in China, reunify with his family, continue his education and work for reform in his country.  All our diplomacy was directed at putting him in the best possible position to achieve his objectives," Nuland added. 

Chen's plight has overshadowed high-level talks on economic and international issues due to begin Thursday. The United States hopes the negotiations will encourage greater Chinese cooperation on trade as well over Iran, Syria, North Korea and other international disputes.

Who is Fu? Chinese exile is 'God's double agent'

In what earlier appeared to be a deal to end the diplomatic tussle between the U.S. and China over his future, Chinese authorities promised he would be relocated to a safe environment where he could study at a university, a U.S. official said, speaking prior to Chen's comments.

Chen, who went to the embassy after making a daring escape from house arrest on April 21, ran afoul of local government officials in China for exposing forced abortions and other abuses. His dogged pursuit of justice and mistreatment by authorities brought him attention from the U.S. and foreign governments, and earned him supporters among many ordinary Chinese.

Chen may have been forced to accept what he's offered, according to Zeng Jinyan, a long-time friend of Chen's family and also a human rights activist. Zeng has been tweeting about Chen's latest situation since Wednesday evening, some in Chinese, some in English, according to NBC News.

Chinese crackdown on dissident's family and friends

According to Zeng, Chen was unwilling to leave the American embassy but had no choice because his wife and two children would be sent back to Shandong province if he insisted on staying. It is not known when and how they arrived in Beijing, but Chen's wife Yuan Weijing told Zeng that local government in Shandong province installed security cameras inside her home and moved in, waiting for her and the children if Chen didn't agree to leave the embassy. Yuan also said she was arrested on April 27th when they found out Chen has escaped.

Teng Biao, a lawyer who's been assisting Chen in the past few years, tweeted about his conversation with Chen Wednesday afternoon, asking Chen "I've heard you were threatened, is that true?" Chen said, "Yes, very true. People from the Foreign Ministry said this afternoon, if you didn't leave the embassy, your wife and children would have been sent back to Shandong." In the same conversation, Chen said the Shandong officials who escorted his family are still in Beijing.

Blind dissident’s case a 'hot potato' for US-China

Meanwhile, Chinese government is taking a more hard-lined attitude on the case, demanding an apology from the American government.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said: "It should be pointed out that Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese citizen, was taken by the U.S. side to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing via abnormal means, and the Chinese side is strongly dissatisfied with the move."

Jordan Pouille / AFP - Getty Images

Chinese activist activist Chen Guangcheng (left) is seen in a wheelchair pushed by a nurse at the Chaoyang hospital in Beijing Wednesday.

He stressed that China demands that the United States thoroughly investigate the event, hold relevant people accountable and ensure that such an event does not happen again. "What the U.S. side has done has interfered in the domestic affairs of China, and the Chinese side will never accept it," said the spokesman.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- who arrived in Beijing Tuesday ahead of the talks -- said that the case had been handled "in a way that reflected his choices and our values" -- comments made before Chen's remarks that he feared for his and his family's safety.

She said it was crucial to ensure that Beijing kept its pledge to leave him unmolested. "The United States government and the American people are committed to remaining engaged with Mr. Chen and his family in the days, weeks, and years ahead," Clinton added.

Chen's supporters said last Friday that he had escaped after 20 months of house arrest and gone into U.S. government protection.

More on Chen: Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

NBC News, msnbc.com staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Courtesy Rebel Pepper

A cartoon mocking Christian Bale's confrontation with Chinese security was posted on Weibo, China's Twitter-like service, on Friday.

BEIJING – Just days after Christian Bale made a red carpet appearance in Beijing for the premiere of his blockbuster new movie, “The Flowers of War,” about the 1937 Japanese sacking of Nanking, he made even bigger headlines in China off-screen on Friday.

Bale invited CNN’s Beijing bureau crew to accompany him Thursday as he attempted to visit Chen Guangcheng, an activist who has been under house arrest since his release from a four-year-long jail sentence last year.

The 40-year-old Chen, a blind self-taught lawyer became a persecuted dissident after he filed a lawsuit in 2006 on behalf of residents of his hometown, Linyi, over the city’s practice of forced abortions and sterilizations, a municipal policy that runs counter to national regulations.

He was thrown in prison on what human rights activists say were trumped-up charges of “intentional damage of public property” and “gathering people to block traffic.”

Related link: Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

Since Chen’s release in September 2010, dozens of Chinese and foreign reporters, as well as supporters, have gone to Dongshigu village, in Shandong Province, to try to visit him, but all have blocked from even entering the town. Some were even violently manhandled and beaten up by unidentified thugs, and some TV crews had their equipment damaged or confiscated.

Bale was no exception.  

He and the crew were stopped at a road checkpoint when government security guards wearing green army coats asked what they were doing and punched the camera. When Bale took out his flip camera to record, he was punched and shoved, exactly the same treatment the CNN crew received just a few months earlier when they tried to visit.

After the scuffle, the crew got back into their vehicle and drove off, but they were followed by a security van for about 40 minutes.

"I'm not brave doing this," Bale said on camera. "The local people who are standing up to the authorities, who are visiting Chen and his family and getting beaten or detained, I want to support them."

In a later interview on CNN, Bale said, “It’s amazing a superpower like China is actually terrified of this man. It shows such an intrinsic weakness within the fabric of the country.”

China's human rights detainees 2010

He also stressed that he did not inform any members of the movie crew in order not to implicate them with his own actions.

‘Pandaman vs. Batman!’
Bale’s confrontation with the security guards soon made headlines on Twitter and Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like, but government-controlled, social media forum. Posts about the encounter spread rapidly on Friday morning with some joking headlines like “Pandaman vs. Batman!”

Andy Wong / AP

English actor Christian Bale speaks to journalists on the red carpet as he arrives for the debut of the Zhang Yimou-directed movie.

The cartoonist known as “Rebel Pepper” who posted the Pandaman vs. Batman cartoon on Weibo said he was somewhat surprised that Bale was treated exactly the same as everyone else.

“Dongshigu village is the only place in China that everyone is treated the same [and roughed up] no matter where you are from,” Rebel Pepper said during a phone interview with NBC News.

Some cynics noted it could be a publicity stunt for Bale's new movie, but most expressed their respect and appreciation.

A Weibo user named Shenan wrote, “You could pretend not to see or hear. That blind man is not your relative or friend in a faraway foreign country. Even if the whole 1.3 billion people were jailed, it’s not your business. You really didn’t have to ask for the roughing up, Batman.” 

By Friday afternoon, Weibo administrators censored all the posts related to Bale’s attempted visit. Steven Jiang, the CNN producer who was with Bale, found all his Weibo posts on their journey could not be forwarded.

It is a common practice for social media censors to jump in and try to put out the fire online before the flames get out of control. But determined Weibo users still spread the news with puns or pictures too difficult to censor. 

A post on Weibo joked that Zhang’s movie “Flowers of the War," would be pulled from Chinese cinemas. But another user said, “No, the movie will be there, only all the parts Christian Bale is in will be deleted!”

Bale left China today for the U.S., but Chen still remains off-limit to all his visitors.

Christian Bale scuffles with Chinese guards

BEIJING -- "Batman" star Christian Bale was roughed up by security guards who stopped him visiting a blind activist living under house arrest in China.

Video footage of the scuffle was shot by a camera crew traveling with the Hollywood actor as he promoted a film he has made in the country.

CNN posted scenes of the confrontation between Bale and the guards on its website Friday.

• Behind The Wall: Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

The star's actions are sure to focus attention on the plight of Chen Guangcheng, guarded around the clock by plain-clothed and uniformed workers who have blocked dozens of reporters and fellow activists trying to see him in the past.

Bale was to leave China on Friday and his representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

Bale, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for last year's "The Fighter," traveled Thursday with a crew from CNN to the village in eastern China where Chen, the blind lawyer, lives with his family in complete isolation.

They were stopped at the entrance to Dongshigu village in Shandong province by unidentified men.

'An inspiration'
The video footage shows Bale asking to see Chen, with a CNN producer providing interpretation, but being ordered by one of the guards to leave. He then asked why he was unable to pass through. The guards responded by trying to grab or punch a small video camera Bale was carrying.

"What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is," Bale was quoted as saying by CNN.

Chen's case has been raised publicly by U.S. lawmakers and diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, all to no response from China.

CNN said Bale first learned of Chen from news reports when he was in China filming "The Flowers of War," China's official submission this year for best foreign language film Oscar.

"Chen Guangcheng is a newsworthy figure ... and as such it is in the interest of CNN's global viewers to hear from him," CNN said in a statement. "Mr. Bale reached out to CNN and invited us to join him on his journey to visit Chen."

• Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police

Chen, a self-taught lawyer who was blinded by a fever in infancy, angered authorities after documenting forced late-term abortions and sterilizations and other abuses by overzealous authorities trying to meet population control goals in his rural community. He was imprisoned for allegedly instigating an attack on government offices and organizing a group of people to disrupt traffic, charges his supporters say were fabricated.

Although now officially free under the law, he has been confined to his home in the village eight hours' drive from Beijing and subjected to periodic beatings and other abuse, activists say.

• Story: 10 prominent Chinese activists jailed ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize

While Bale's visit focuses new attention on Chen's case, CNN's role raises questions about activism and advocacy among reporters, said David Bandurski, editor of the China Media Project website at the University of Hong Kong.

"It made me instantly uncomfortable, wondering how it all came together. It raises questions about where the lines are drawn," Bandurski said.

Andy Wong / AP

Christian Bale, center, is led by security guards upon arrival on the red carpet for an event of the Zhang Yimou-directed new movie "The Flowers of War" in Beijing on Dec. 12.

Politically sensitive subject
The incident also drew strong interest — most of it highly positive — on social networking sites such as Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo.

Having their star's name pinging across the Internet in connection with such a politically sensitive subject puts promoters of "The Flowers of War" in a bind. The film opens in China on Friday and next week in the United States.

Directed by the renowned Zhang Yimou, it is also the most expensive Chinese movie ever made, at $94 million, some of which came from the state-owned Bank of China.

The movie centers on the 1937 sacking of the eastern city of Nanjing, a central event in China's pre-revolutionary "century of humiliation" and has been described by some critics as hewing to official propaganda portraying Chinese as heroic victims and Japanese as one-dimensional cartoon villains.

While China has the world's third-largest film industry — both in box office and output — it has made relatively little global impact. Story lines are often heavily influenced by the ruling Communist Party, whose culture commissars must approve scripts and have final say over whether a film gets released.

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The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.