The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, said yesterday that China was still repressing political and religious freedoms but that signs of change must be recognised.
On the eve of a visit to China to clear the way for President Clinton's trip there in June, Ms Albright walked a tightrope between calling for progress on human rights and praising China's achievements.
Japan and the US "both wish to see a China where the authorities do not fear freedom of expression but rather see it as essential to the development of a stable society," she said in Tokyo.
China's most famous political prisoner, Mr Wang Dan, a leader of the 1989 pro-democracy student movement, was freed for medical reasons and put on a flight to the US on April 19th.
Mr Clinton's visit to China will be the first by a US president since the crackdown by Chinese troops on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Ms Albright meanwhile called for recognition of "the ways in which China is changing".
"The Chinese government is less involved in the lives of its citizens than at any time in the last 50 years," she said.
Meanwhile, China has sentenced a rock singer and a businessman to three years in a labour camp for telling international groups about the detention of four dissident poets, a Hong Kong human rights group said yesterday. Rock singer Wu Ruojie and businessman, Mr Li Xi, received the sentences in Guiyang, capital of China's south-western Guizhou province, the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said.