BLOGGING via TYPEWRITER.

China’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that the dissident Chen Guangcheng can apply to study outside China in the same manner as more than 300,000 Chinese students already abroad, signaling a possible breakthrough in a diplomatic crisis that has deeply embarrassed the White House and threatens to sour relations with Beijing.

In a two-sentence statement posted on the ministry’s Web site, a spokesman, Liu Weimin, stated that should Mr. Chen wish to study abroad, he “can apply through normal channels to the relevant departments in accordance with the law, just like any other Chinese citizen.”

Speaking later at a press briefing, Mr. Liu said he was certain that “competent Chinese authorities will handle his application in accordance with the law.”

The announcement came hours after Mr. Chen, in a four-point statement conveyed by telephone to a friend, insisted that he did not want to seek political asylum in the United States but that he had been invited to attend New York University and hoped “to go to the United States and rest for several months.”

That would give Chinese officials a face-saving opportunity to allow Mr. Chen and his family to leave China in the same manner as do scores of thousands of Chinese students every year, according to Jerome A. Cohen, a New York attorney and expert on Chinese law who discussed the proposal with Mr. Chen this week.

Mr. Chen has been in a central Beijing hospital receiving treatment for an injured foot since Wednesday, when he left the United States Embassy under an agreement between American and Chinese diplomats that would have allowed him to study law in Tianjin, a major city on China’s Pacific coast. The diplomatic crisis erupted after Mr. Chen came to believe that the Chinese government would not honor the bargain and began telling friends from his hospital bed that he feared for his and his family’s safety.

Mr. Chen’s subsequent pleas for help from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — repeated in an urgent telephone call played on speaker during an emergency congressional hearing in Washington on Thursday — frayed the fragile deal American officials had struck with the Chinese only one day before the start of high-level talks between China and the United States.

Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident who fled house arrest last month in a dramatic escape from security forces, left the American Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday after securing assurances from the Chinese government that he would remain safe, American officials said in the first account of his diplomatically tense six-day stay there.

The officials described details of the negotiations between both governments and Mr. Chen as well as a telephone call to the dissident from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton after he left the embassy compound for treatment at a medical facility here.

Mrs. Clinton said in a statement that she was “pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng’s stay and departure from the U.S. Embassy in a way that reflected his choices and our values. I was glad to have the chance to speak with him today and to congratulate him on being reunited with his wife and children.”

“Mr. Chen has a number of understandings with the Chinese government about his future, including the opportunity to pursue higher education in a safe environment,” she added. “Making these commitments a reality is the next crucial task.”

Mr. Chen entered the American Embassy six days ago with the assistance of American officials because of the “exceptional circumstances, including his disabilities,” a senior American official told American reporters traveling with Mrs. Clinton. “On humanitarian grounds we assisted him and allowed him to remain on a temporary basis,” the official said.

Mr. Chen, a lawyer who had campaigned against forced abortions and sterilizations conducted as part of China’s policy of limiting families to one child, suffered an injury to his foot during his escape from his house in Shandong province last week and was walking with the help of a crutch, the official said.

During his time at the embassy, Mr. Chen adhered to his position that he was not seeking asylum in the United States but wanted to stay with his family in China as a free person, said the official, who was involved in the three-way negotiations that involved Mr. Chen and officials from the United States and China.

For months, Chen Guangcheng, one of China’s best-known dissidents, played a cat-and-mouse game with the phalanx of guards encircling his home. He dug a tunnel to try to escape, a friend says, but was found out. And he sneaked out a video that alerted his supporters to the beatings he said he and his wife suffered at the hands of the men who kept them virtual prisoners in their rural farmhouse.

Then last Sunday night, in an improbable escape, Mr. Chen, who is blind and reportedly weak from months of mistreatment, scaled the wall that has been built around his house, slipped past his security detail and made a desperate sprint to apparent safety in Beijing. The daring rush for freedom could not have been possible without a small network of activists who risked detention to help him and who, supporters with knowledge of the escape said, used coded messages to communicate and elude a surveillance apparatus that is one of the world’s most pervasive.

By Saturday, three activists had disappeared, including the woman who drove Mr. Chen 300 miles to Beijing and a man who admitted to meeting the dissident as he was shuttled between safe houses in the capital. The man’s wife said he was taken away by the police.

Friends of Mr. Chen, along with people in the Chinese government, say he is now inside the American Embassy in Beijing. If true, that creates diplomatic headaches for the United States just days before Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other American officials arrive for annual talks.

That the underground network of activists was able to help Mr. Chen evade his captors and move around the capital undetected for days has undoubtedly shaken Chinese leaders, who have become increasingly determined to suppress dissent through technology and brute force. Friends say his escape was so well executed that local officials did not realize until Thursday that he was gone.

As the Chinese government forges ahead on a multibillion-dollar effort to blanket the country with surveillance cameras, one American company stands to profit: Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney.

In December, a Bain-run fund in which a Romney family blind trust has holdings purchased the video surveillance division of a Chinese company that claims to be the largest supplier to the government’s Safe Cities program, a highly advanced monitoring system that allows the authorities to watch over university campuses, hospitals, mosques and movie theaters from centralized command posts.

The Bain-owned company, Uniview Technologies, produces what it calls “infrared antiriot” cameras and software that enable police officials in different jurisdictions to share images in real time through the Internet. Previous projects have included an emergency command center in Tibet that “provides a solid foundation for the maintenance of social stability and the protection of people’s peaceful life,” according to Uniview’s Web site.

Such surveillance systems are often used to combat crime and the manufacturer has no control over whether they are used for other purposes. But human rights advocates say in China they are also used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents. “There are video cameras all over our monastery, and their only purpose is to make us feel fear,” said Loksag, a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Gansu Province. He said the cameras helped the authorities identify and detain nearly 200 monks who participated in a protest at his monastery in 2008.