China may have sown the seeds of its next human rights row with the United States even as it looks to end the current one over blind dissident Chen Guangcheng, with its treatment of him inspiring a band of lawyers to join his human-rights battle.

The tough line over Chen, whose plea for U.S. protection sparked a diplomatic crisis with Washington, has encouraged Chinese lawyers and advocates to challenge what they see as the ruling Communist Party’s stifling of lawful dissent.

Embarrassed by Chen’s escape from house arrest and dash to the U.S. embassy in Beijing last month, the government is expected to allow Chen and his family to travel to the United States as a way of easing Sino-U.S. tensions on human rights.

Lawyers from around the country have already come forward to provide his extended family with the kind of advocacy Chen, a self-taught legal activist, became…