Christian Bale punched while trying to visit Chinese activist

Christian Bale, the Hollywood actor, has been punched while trying to visit Chen Guangcheng, one of China's most prominent human rights lawyers.

Mr Bale, the current star of the Batman franchise, was in China to promote his new film, the Flowers of War, which is China's entry to the Oscars.

However, after reading of Mr Chen's plight, and about the stream of Chinese sympathisers who have endured beatings as they run a relay race trying to visit him, Mr Bale decided to try his luck with a trip to Dongshigu, the village where Mr Chen lives.

The 40-year-old Mr Chen has been under house arrest since being released from serving a four-year prison sentence last September.

A blind self-trained lawyer, he upset local Communist party officials by exposing a gruesome programme of forced abortions and sterilisations as part of China’s one-child policy.

To make sure no visitors can reach him, his phones and internet lines have been cut and a 200-strong army of thugs patrol the perimeters of his village night and day.

As the actor approached the village, he was stopped by four men in plain clothes.

"I am here to see Chen Guangcheng," Mr Bale told them, according to CNN, which accompanied him and filmed the encounter. "Go away!" the men shouted back. Dozens more men then emerged and a scuffle ensued.

"Why can I not visit this free man?" Mr Bale asked, while being punched by guards trying to grapple his camera away from him and to separate him from the group. Mr Bale's car was then chased away from the village by minivans as he made his escape.

"This doesn't come naturally to me, this is not what I actually enjoy, it isn't about me," Mr Bale told CNN. "But this was just a situation that said I can't look the other way."

"I'm not brave doing this," he added. "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."

Mr Bale's involvement in "Operation Free Chen Guangcheng", as the mission to visit him has been dubbed on the Chinese internet, caused a flurry of excitement on Sina Weibo, China's answer to Twitter.

"Our village authorities really are formidable. They can even stop Batman," wrote one commenter. "This village really has realised our dream of social equality," remarked another, acidly. "Everyone has an equal chance of being beaten up."