BEIJING: US and Chinese officials met in Beijing on Wednesday for sensitive human rights talks, with the Americans expected to press China to ease a severe government crackdown on dissent.
Rights groups have urged the US delegation to "give teeth" to the talks, a recurring dialogue that activists say has so far achieved little.
Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner is heading an inter agency US delegation for the two-day US-China Human Rights Dialogue, which began Wednesday morning, according to a US embassy spokesman.
In unusually direct language, the US State Department last week made clear it would zero in on China's clampdown and the "negative trend of forced disappearances, extralegal detentions, and arrests and convictions."
Chinese authorities have launched their toughest campaign against government critics in years after anonymous online appeals emerged in February calling for weekly protests to emulate those that have rocked the Arab world.
Scores of Chinese activists and rights lawyers have been rounded up since the emergence of the "Jasmine" campaign, which has not resulted in any reports of demonstrations.
China has been criticised worldwide over the crackdown, particularly since prominent artist Ai Weiwei disappeared into police custody in early April.
A staunch critic of the Communist Party whose fame had until now largely shielded him, Ai is being investigated for "economic crimes", the government has said, without giving details.
Foreign ministry official Chen Xu will head China's delegation to the dialogue, held intermittently depending on the state of bilateral ties.
It is unclear why Beijing agreed to hold the talks at such a sensitive time. They were held last year, in 2008, and in 2002.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei on Tuesday defended what he called China's "progress in the field of human rights."
But the United States has said it would also bring up issues such as "rule of law, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, labor rights, minority rights" and other issues.
The Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders activist group said the dialogue had so far "produced very few concrete results."
"But the US government can and must use these meetings to hold the Chinese government accountable to its international and constitutional obligations to protect human rights," including ending torture and releasing detainees, it said in a statement.
On the religious front, China has drawn fire for detaining scores of members of an unregistered Protestant church in Beijing and for a security crackdown on a restive Tibetan monastery in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
China faces seething dissent among ethnic Tibetans and the Muslim Uighur minority in the northwestern Xinjiang region and has tightened security across both regions following violent unrest in Tibetan areas in 2008 and in Xinjiang in 2009.
The Washington-based Uyghur American Association urged the US to demand China halt what it called a wave of persecution in Xinjiang following the 2009 unrest, which set Uighurs against members of China's dominant Han ethnic group.
The US must "seek answers from the Chinese government on egregious human rights abuses against the Uyghur people," the association quoted exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer as saying.
Visiting Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she raised a range of rights concerns in talks Tuesday with Premier Wen Jiabao. She said Wen denied China had taken a "backward step" on rights.
Posner is scheduled to brief the media about the talks on Thursday.
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