Mr Chen, who escaped from house arrest 10 days ago, had earlier left the US Embassy in Beijing, bound for hospital where he was being reunited with his family.
His stay at the embassy had threatened to overshadow today's visit to China by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She is there for strategic talks with the country's leaders.
A US official said Chinese authorities had promised that Mr Chen will be relocated to a safe environment where he can study at a university.
The official said Mr Chen had been taken into the US Embassy because he was in need of medical care.
The blind legal expert had escaped from house arrest by scaling a wall and slipping past security guards, before making his way to Beijing, some 300 miles from his village of Dongshigu.
Supporters say Mr Chen - who has been visually impaired since childhood - then sought the help of US diplomats.
American officials had not until now confirmed Mr Chen's presence inside the embassy.
"Obviously I'm aware of the press reports on the situation in China, but I'm not going to make a statement on the issue," US president Barack Obama said this week.
China has demanded an apology from the US and asked for assurances that it will not happen again.
Chen Guangcheng is little known to the general public inside China, where news is carefully censored by the authorities. But his case has attracted the attention of human rights groups both inside and outside the country.
He spent four years in prison after exposing the fact that thousands of people in his home province of Shandong were subjected to forced abortions and surgical sterilisation.
After his release in 2010, both he and his family were placed under house arrest.
Following his escape, Mr Chen recorded a plea for help, addressed directly to China's premier Wen Jiabao in which he claimed he and his family had been violently assaulted.
He then asked Mr Wen to punish those responsible, guarantee the safety of his family, and bring corrupt officials to justice.
"A dozen men broke into our house, pushed my wife to the ground, covered her in a duvet, and beat her for hours," says Mr Chen in the video.
He also said that the officials involved "told me that they don't care about the law - they don't care about legal process - and there's nothing we can do about it".
For the Chinese government, US involvement in Mr Chen's case is a very public embarrassment. For the US government, the issue presented a diplomatic dilemma.
America had little choice but to help Mr Chen. Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romeny demanded that US officials took "every measure" to protect the dissident.
The Texas-based China Aid Association, which has campaigned on Mr Chen's behalf, said the case was a "pivotal test" of "US credibility as a defender of freedom".
The issue has been overshadowing Mrs Clinton's visit to China for talks on security and economic issues.
"This could not have come at a worse time for the US," said Washington Post Beijing correspondent Keith Richburg, speaking before Mr Chen left the embassy.
"This administration came in saying 'human rights is important but we also need China on a whole host of other issues. We need their help with the eurozone crisis, Syria, Iran, and North Korea'.
"But now Chen Guangcheng, by escaping from house arrest, has forced human rights back to the front and centre of the relationship between US and China, and that's exactly what this administration did not want."
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