Beijing —- During his first visit to China last week, Gov. Sonny Perdue praised the "harmonious" relations between Georgia and China and stressed the growing trade links between the two.

Absent from his public remarks was any mention of China's human rights record, its tight restrictions on journalists or the ongoing crackdown in Tibet. Indeed, even as Perdue prepared to wrap up his visit and head back to Georgia, well-known dissident Hu Jia was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for his vocal criticisms of the government.

"I don't think that on the first visit that we have earned the right to lecture China about their human rights issues or about Tibet," the governor said during an interview Thursday, the same day Hu was sentenced. Such issues, he said, "are best dealt with on a nation-to-nation basis."

By keeping quiet, Perdue was following standard protocol for state officials on trade missions. American governors and mayors do not go to China to argue for human rights. They go to compete for business for their cities and states, and that competition is getting more intense: So far, these officials have opened 29 trade or tourism offices in China, all of them seeking a piece of Beijing's business.

The lure of China's surging economy —- and Beijing's strong-arm trade tactics —- have blunted most official criticism of China, experts said.

"It's not rocket science for any official to realize what it takes for China to be friendly to them is no, no, no criticism," said Sharon Hom, executive director of the New York-based group Human Rights in China.

Some question what Perdue might hope to accomplish by criticizing Beijing, but others assert that trade missions from democratic countries should not totally ignore political repression.

"I can understand that if a governor shows up in Beijing and trashes the government over Tibet, it's not going to be very good," said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. " ... But it is a problem when there's no mention at all of anything that is within the human rights realm.

"These are big, real, genuine concerns, and if you airbrush them from the picture, then you're effectively participating in concealing the problem."

Carrots and sticks

Beijing has made it clear that it will use its immense economic power to punish countries that it considers politically uncooperative. For example, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel met last September with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, Beijing canceled scheduled talks with Germany's finance minister and other bilateral meetings.

"The German business community is going to pay a pretty steep price," said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University's Tokyo campus.

Beijing claims the Dalai Lama's government in exile —- which fled Tibet after Chinese soldiers occupied the remote Himalayan region in the 1950s —- has agitated for Tibetan independence and organized protests that erupted throughout Tibetan areas of China last month.

The Dalai Lama has denied involvement in those protests. Beijing also pressured India and Nepal to control demonstrations by Tibetans against China in their countries, according to media reports. India, which is expected to complete $37 billion worth of trade with China this year, ordered police to stop Tibetans marching to the Chinese border last month.

And Nepal agreed to stop mountaineers from scaling Mount Everest for 10 days in May, a move rights groups say Beijing wanted in order to prevent protests from disrupting a Chinese attempt to carry the Olympic torch to the world's highest point ahead of the Beijing Games in August.

The Olympics

At the same time, Beijing has used its growing foreign reserves —- currently worth $1.6 trillion —- to encourage political alignment with its policies. The power of China's growing economy was made clear last December when the poor African nation of Malawi switched its political alliance to China from Taiwan —- which Beijing considers a renegade province —- after receiving pledges for over $6 billion in aid, according to news reports.

"Almost every nation is afraid of invoking the ire of Beijing," Kingston said. "In a negative way, Beijing is not reluctant to use whatever leverage it has."

The dissonance between popular concern about Beijing's human rights record and official reluctance to criticize China has been highlighted by the upcoming Summer Olympics.

On Thursday, a group of organizations including the Washington D.C.-based Save Darfur Coalition called on world leaders to boycott the Games' Opening Ceremony unless China pressures Sudan to end violence in its war-torn Darfur region.

Activists claim that China, Sudan's largest trading partner, has not done enough to force the African nation to end a war that has resulted in some 200,000 deaths and displaced millions of people.

President Bush has resisted pressure to cancel plans to attend the Olympics but has said he will raise human rights concerns with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Any leverage?

Whether state and local leaders visiting China should address such thorny political issues is more complicated.

Perdue said the state of Georgia is not in a position to criticize Beijing's policies, partly because it does not study the situation in China. "We don't propose to have a state department speaking for our nation, and I don't think it's appropriate [to criticize]," Perdue said.

No groups or individuals in Georgia asked him to address human rights or the situation in Tibet during his trip, Perdue said, though "there are certainly people in Atlanta and Georgia that had strong feelings about Tibet."

Perdue, who is considering returning to Beijing during the Olympics, may address human rights concerns on future trips. Asked whether he might press Beijing to improve religious freedoms, he said he would "hope to develop a relationship with state officials here to speak my mind plainly about those kinds of things ... to ask if my information is correct and to express concern if that were the case."

Regarding the tense situation in Tibet, he said he hoped "they can resolve it peacefully.

"But that is something that on a nation-to-nation, central government-to-central government level is best dealt with," he said.

Craig Simons is the Asia correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Beijing.