China Frees Writer Seized on Baker Visit : Dissident: She was taken from Beijing to block a meeting with Americans. The move cast a shadow over the secretary’s trip.

Chinese dissident Dai Qing was allowed to return home Wednesday, four days after authorities picked her up from a Beijing hotel to block her from meeting Secretary of State James A. Baker III or any of his aides during their visit here.

Word of Dai’s detention Saturday began to spread here shortly before Baker left Sunday to return to Washington. Her disappearance--which came while she was waiting for a telephone call from the U.S. Embassy--cast an additional shadow on Baker’s trip, which saw tense bargaining and only modest achievements.

Dai, a former political prisoner who is one of China’s most famous female journalists, told reporters Wednesday that security agents had taken her from the hotel and forced her into a car belonging to her newspaper, the state-run Guangming Daily. She said she was taken to the coastal town of Beidaihe, about 180 miles east of Beijing.

Dai, 50, is the adopted daughter of Ye Jianying, one of the revolutionary founders of Communist power in China. Her close family connections, high in China’s government, provide her some degree of protection. But after the violent 1989 army crackdown on the Tian An Men Square pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing, she was imprisoned without charge for 10 months for sympathizing with the student protesters.

More recently, she has been denied an exit visa to travel to Harvard University to accept a one-year fellowship for journalists.

Although still on the staff of Guangming Daily, Dai was not allowed to write for the newspaper after her release from prison. But shortly before Baker’s arrival, she was ordered to take a sudden “reporting” assignment that would require her to be away from Beijing when he was here. She refused.

Dai said Wednesday that the people who forced her to Beidaihe said she was being taken there to write a report about a glass factory.

China’s Foreign Ministry has denied that Dai was arrested. But in Chinese legal terminology, people may be detained for days, weeks or even much longer without being officially “arrested,” which involves the filing of formal charges.

Dai said Wednesday that she had been contacted by U.S. Embassy officials before Baker’s visit to suggest a possible meeting. She had declined to meet Baker, believing that it would be too dangerous for her, but had agreed to meet another official in his party, she said.