BANGKOK - U.S. President George W. Bush's visit this week to China is pivotal in extending the cause of political, civil and religious liberties in both China and across Asia, say human rights advocates.
Bush must convey unequivocally that human rights issues still remain a priority in the shaping of foreign policy, they say.
This an emphasis, they add, will serve two objectives: informing Beijing that it must improve its rights record and reminding other Asian governments that Washington will not ignore human rights abuses - even if Beijing and Washington have found new warmth in their friendship after Sep. 11.
''Human rights should be a priority issue for President Bush's dialogue with China,'' affirms Vitit Muntarbhorn, a Thai legal expert and co-chairperson of the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism. ''He needs to raise it in constructive terms, promoting more proactive human rights-related action.''
Mike Jendrzejczyk says that the prevailing global political climate -- where the United States is trying to court international support for its 'war against terror' -- is a key reason for Bush to make a strong case that Washington will ''not turn a blind eye to China's repression'' on many fronts.
''It would be a disaster if Bush gave the impression that the U.S. is abandoning its previous commitment to promoting human rights in China in order to court Beijing's involvement in the anti-terrorism effort,'' says Jendrzejczyk, director at the Asia Division of the New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Sartika Soesilowati, a political science lecturer at Airlangga University in Surabaya, Indonesia, sees another danger emerging from any attempt by Bush to soft-pedal human rights issues.
''It may be interpreted by some Asian governments that the U.S. has already changed its policies of human rights in Asia,'' says Soesilowati.
This can give rise to governments making a case, once again, to ''implement their 'Asian values','' she says, in reference to a concept used by some governments in South-east Asia as a pretext to repress human rights at the expense of economic development and the traditional values of a community.
Critics have assailed the ''Asian values'' idea as an excuse by governments to justify their authoritarian regimes.
Bush, in fact, will find it difficult to sidestep this latest round of concerns during his passage through China on Feb. 21-22, the final leg of a week-long visit to Asia that includes stops in Japan and South Korea.
Just before leaving Washington over the weekend, Bush said he would raise concerns over human rights, including religious freedom, in China - and activists are watching the path he will tread in Beijing on these sensitive concerns, which Beijing says are internal matters.
''I will express my hopes that as China moves forward, it will embrace the universal demands of human dignity, freedom of conscience and religion, and the rights and value of every life," he added.
Human Rights Watch released a backgrounder on the eve of Bush's departure that catalogues a number of rights violations that have occurred in China in the past year.
These range from restrictions on freedom of expression to the ''tens of thousands of Chinese citizens'' being sentenced annually - ''without charge or trial'' - to face up to three years of ''re-education through labour,'' HRW says.
''The United Nations has condemned the system (of labour camps) as inherently arbitrary,'' HRW declares, urging Bush to ''seek a concrete commitment from China to abolish reeducation through labour.''
In addition, HRW has also drawn attention to Beijing's tough stance on religious and ethnic minorities, including the Falun Gong, the Turkic-speaking Muslim minority in China's western Xinjiang province and Tibetans.
Last week, the Washington D.C.-based Freedom House released a damning report that exposes the systematic way the Chinese government persecutes ''large, unregistered Christian churches and other religious groups nationwide''.
''Measures outlined to be taken against the banned religious groups include surveillance, the deployment of special undercover agents, the gathering of 'criminal evidence,' 'complete demolition' of a group's organisational system, interrogation, and arrest, as well as the confiscation of church property,'' the report says.
U.S. officials have expressed concern about the sentencing of Hong Kong businessman Li Guangqiang found guilty of 'illegal trading' after smuggling bibles into China. Earlier this month, Chinese state media reported that a Fujian court had said he can serve his sentence outside jail because he had hepatitis B.
For its part, the global human rights lobby Amnesty International (AI) is urging Bush to step up pressure on Beijing to release the over 200 prisoners of conscience languishing in Chinese jails.
Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman and rights advocate from western Xinjiang province, is among such prisoners. She was arrested in August 1999 ''while attempting to meet with a delegation of Congressional staff on an official U.S. government trip to China,'' says Amnesty International.
There are other human rights issues in other Asian countries. Governments in central Asian countries like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have acquired notoriety for oppressing Muslim groups who do not toe the official political line.
In the case of Uzbekistan, another newfound Washington friend that was useful in the United States' attacks on Afghanistan, the U.S. government has come under fire not speaking up in the face of violations of rights and corruption issues that it would normally have pointed out.
In recent months, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and India have been strengthening their national security policies at what critics say is the expense of political and civil liberties. And countries that already have such national security doctrines, like Pakistan, are doing little to ease up on such policies.
Like China, the other Asian countries have pursued some of these oppressive measures under the guise of supporting the U.S.-led 'war against terrorism'.
''It has already proved that is more easy to get (U.S) support and sympathy through diplomacy of terrorism than diplomacy of human rights,'' says Soesilowati, the Indonesian political scientist.
Vitit, the Thai human rights advocate, argues that ''we need to be on guard against fictitious claims on the parts of states and other groups seeking to dilute human rights''.
''There should be no inconsistency between respect for human rights and anti-terrorism,'' he adds. ''Claims based upon anti-terrorism should not be accepted as gospel but must be subjected to international monitoring and review.''