The Global Times referred to the sensational case of Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng in a editorial as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Beijing for previously scheduled talks likely to be overshadowed by the affair.

Chen somehow escaped from house arrest at his home in eastern China on April 22 and is believed to be in US protective custody in Beijing, his supporters have said.

Neither government has commented on the highly sensitive issue but the Global Times, while not explicitly confirming the reports, appeared to lend credence to them by saying Chen's case was unlikely to hurt relations.

"China-US relations should not be affected by the Chen Guangcheng incident," the paper, an offshoot of the official Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, said in both its Chinese-language and English editions.

The editorial went on to downplay Chen's importance as a dissident figure, saying Western media's portrayal of him as a "heroic blind rights defender" was "mistaken."

"(His) personal view of his own influence in China is divorced from reality," it said.

"The development of human rights in China can only come from within China itself. The West has no power to continue to push China in the human rights sphere."

Chen is best known for exposing abuses of China's population-controlling "one-child policy" including forced abortions and sterilisations.

He was thrown in jail for more than four years and put under what he calls "illegal" house arrest in Shandong province since his 2010 release from prison.

Chen's escape, and a subsequent video he made detailing harsh treatment suffered by him and his family, is a huge embarrassment for China, which has thus far squelched all media or online discussion of the issue.

The editorial was not posted on the Chinese version of the Global Times' website.

Unless it can be settled swiftly, the case of Chen Guangcheng threatens to overshadow the annual meeting between leaders of the world's two largest economies on key issues ranging from North Korea's rocket launch to Syria.

Clinton has in the past repeatedly criticised China's treatment of the 40-year-old legal campaigner, who riled authorities by exposing forced abortions and sterilisations under China's "one-child" policy.

US officials have kept an unusually solid wall of secrecy over Chen's case, in an indication of the sensitivity of the issue. Beijing has also refused all comment on the campaigner.

But his supporters say he is holed up at the embassy in Beijing after escaping from his heavily guarded home in the eastern province of Shandong on April 22.

Experts said they saw few easy ways to resolve the case of Chen, who has said that he and his wife suffered severe beatings for defiantly speaking out after he completed a four-year jail sentence.

Chen, who recorded a video after his daring escape appealing to China's Premier Wen Jiabao to punish several local officials he said had made his family's life a misery, is said to want to stay in China.

But US officials would be loath to hand him over without iron-clad safety guarantees, and Chen's supporters have in recent days said he may be open to leaving for the United States if his family can join him.

Kenneth Lieberthal, a China expert who was a top aide to president Bill Clinton, said he believed that the United States wanted a solution that is "the least embarrassing to China and to do so as expeditiously as possible."

"The question to my mind is whether in China this turns into a political football in a very political season.

"I think it's more likely to be resolved than to turn into a political football, but you never can predict this stuff," said Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

China's state-run media have maintained total silence on Chen's escape and current whereabouts, but on Wednesday the Global Times daily said the case was unlikely to lead to a Sino-US rupture.

"China-US relations should not be affected by the Chen Guangcheng incident," the paper, an offshoot of the official Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, said an editorial in both its Chinese-language and English editions.

Before the Chen case, Washington had hoped to showcase small signs of progress in relations with China at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which also includes US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.