So I guess they don’t like our ambassador.

BEIJING (Reuters) — One of China’s main official newspapers accused blind dissident Chen Guangcheng on Friday of serving as a “tool” for American subversion of Communist Party power and called the U.S. ambassador a backpack-wearing, Starbucks-sipping troublemaker.

The commentary in the Beijing Daily was the strongest Chinese state media condemnation yet of the U.S. administration in a standoff over Chen, who sought protection in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, then left, and has now said he regrets that choice and wants exile in the United States.

The paper, main mouthpiece of the Beijing city Communist Party authorities, accused the U.S. embassy and U.S. ambassador Gary Locke of engineering incidents intended to sully the Chinese government’s reputation and to foment social discontent.

It said the embassy’s sheltering of Chen was the most recent and most egregious example of this.

“This so-called ‘rights defence hero’ has been packaged by the United States and Western media and given an eye-catching political label, (and) set up as a representative figure against society and against the system,” the paper said of Chen.

“Chen Guangcheng has become a tool and a pawn for American politicians to blacken China,” it added.

Chen and his demands for protection, it said, “fully demonstrate just how desperate American politicians are in sparing no effort to cause trouble for Chinese society.” […]

Unusually, too, the Beijing Daily took very personal aim at ambassador Locke, the former U.S. commerce secretary, who won plaudits from Chinese citizens for his low-key, low-cost demeanor on taking up his diplomatic post. Some said it was a refreshing contrast with their own leaders’ habits.

“Ever since he flew in economy class, carrying his own back pack and buying coffee with coupons, putting on a charade of being a regular guy, what we have seen is not an ambassador to China who is prudent in his words and actions, but a standard-issue American politician who goes out of his way to stir up conflict,” the paper said of Locke.