The text message on my cell phone came last Thursday as I was standing in my Shanghai apartment, surrounded by packing boxes and bubble wrap. Preparing to leave after more than six years in China, I was feeling nostalgic. This is not an easy place to be a journalist--phones are often tapped, sources sometimes harassed--but the economic developments that have transformed this country bring with them an infectious optimism. People's lives are getting better. The polite packer helping to direct traffic in our apartment told my husband he had helped move us into our flat three years ago. Back then he was a simple day laborer; now he's a foreman. Many stories in China have a similar upward trajectory. If for nothing else, I would miss China for the promise it holds.

Then came the text message: "Chen Guangcheng has been sentenced to four years and three months' imprisonment." I first met Chen a year ago. A native of China's eastern Shandong province, the self-schooled legal activist came to Shanghai to publicize the plight of women who had been forced to undergo abortions or sterilizations as part of the nation's family-planning campaign. China has tried for more than two decades to lower its population through its "one-child" policy, but the coercive measures used in Shandong's Linyi region are now illegal. By publicizing abuses committed by local bureaucrats, Chen believed he could persuade higher-level officials to step in and stop them.

A few days after our first meeting, we got together again in Beijing. As we were leaving, Chen had a last request: Would it be possible to see what I looked like? He lifted his hands and felt my face. My nose, he commented, wasn't especially big for a foreigner's. Chen was blinded by a fever as a small child. His hands--as well as an unusually supportive family that reads out loud to him everything from law books to letters from peasants requesting his legal aid--are what allow him to see the world.

"Today," she said over a cell phone, "I had to tell my child that his father won't be joining him for dinner for a long time."

Just hours after our interview, Chen was detained by security officials, who had traveled hundreds of miles from Linyi to Beijing. For the next six months, he was kept under virtual house arrest. Despite the harassment, which included several beatings, he remained hopeful: the State Family Planning Commission in Beijing admitted publicly that Linyi officials had broken the law. Chen kept in contact with foreign journalists through cell phones that friends and family smuggled in for him. Last September I wrote a story for TIME about forced sterilizations in Linyi. The magazine subsequently named Chen to its annual list of the world's 100 most influential people.

After trying to leave his village without official permission last March, Chen was arrested again. The local police finally announced in June that he was being held on charges of damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic. (Witnesses on the scene dispute the allegations.) In previous years, a plea from the U.S. State Department might have helped get a Chinese political prisoner released. But foreign pressure has less effect these days, in part because the international community holds little leverage. China is the world's factory. It holds bountiful foreign-currency reserves. It will be host to the Olympics in 2008. The balance has shifted from China's feeling as if it needs the world to the world's needing China.

The news that Chen was sentenced, after a two-hour trial, to more than four years in prison has left his supporters stunned. His wife Yuan Weijing, who has been under house arrest for months, says her 3-year-old son tells her he doesn't want to start supper until his father comes home. "Today," she said over a cell phone, "I had to tell my child that his father won't be joining him for dinner for a long time."

I had been worried how Yuan would receive our call. I wondered whether she would blame the international media for publicizing the forcible family-planning campaign, perhaps prompting Linyi officials to take out their anger on her husband. But Yuan wasn't bitter. "I am proud of my husband," she said, "and I want the outside world to know what is truly happening."

As I packed up the final boxes for my move from Shanghai, I couldn't shake the disgust I felt over Chen's sentencing. But I was also moved by Yuan's conviction that the outside world needs to know what is happening in Linyi. Hers is a faith based on a system that has not yet taken root in China, one in which justice prevails and heroes like her husband are honored. If Yuan can have hope in China's future, I should too. I can't pack that sense of optimism in a box, but it is something I will treasure long after I leave.

He may have lost his sight as a child, but Chen Guangcheng's legal vision has helped illuminate the plight of thousands of Chinese villagers. Last year officials initiated a forced abortion and sterilization campaign against women in Shandong province who were deemed ineligible to bear another child under China's strict family-planning policy.

"Someone has to fight for people with no voice," he said last fall. "I guess that person is me."

Even though national regulations prohibit such brutal measures, no one except Chen was willing to confront local officials, who may have felt that lowering the number of extra births would help their political careers. By filing a lawsuit on the women's behalf, he became a hero in Shandong and an important player in China's nascent civil society. "Someone has to fight for people with no voice," he said last fall. "I guess that person is me."

Despite his pioneering legal efforts, Chen, 34, holds no law degree. When he was younger, the blind were prohibited from pursuing college degrees in China, so Chen could only audit law classes. But he learned enough to advise fellow villagers. Distraught citizens asked him last year if he could do anything about the coerced abortions and sterilizations. At least two women had been forced to abort their babies just days before their due dates. Chen traveled to Beijing to see what he could do. His drumbeat advocacy prompted the usually reticent State Family Planning Commission to call for the arrest of any officials who break the law. Yet three hours after meeting with TIME in Beijing to discuss the issue, Chen was shoved into an unmarked vehicle by public-security agents from his hometown. They bundled him back to his village, where he was held under house arrest for months. Despite the commission's vow, only one official has been detained. Meanwhile, thugs routinely showed up at Chen's home to rough him up. In March several dozen police arrived to take Chen away, and he hasn't been seen since. But the people of Shandong haven't forgotten the blind man who let the world see their tragedies.

Photo: Gongmin Weiquan Wang. （www.gmwq.org）

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