But Pelosi vowed to be "relentless" in keeping the heat on Beijing over its human rights record, rejecting suggestions that she backed away from her longtime advocacy on the issue during a recent trip to China.

Pelosi deplored that Beijing was still holding prisoners for taking part in the Tiananmen Square democracy protests crushed 20 years ago this week.

"Twenty years later people are still being incarcerated for speaking out about anything other than the party line," Pelosi said. "I don't know that this is an evolution."

"I know that just our advocacy didn't accomplish any more freedom in China. So somehow or other we have to find a way to do that," she told the Brookings Institution think-tank.

Pelosi said she praised China's leadership in her meetings for lifting millions out of poverty, calling it a "remarkable" achievement.

"The problem I have is that -- people say, 'Well, look at Taiwan, look at (South) Korea, different places' -- economic reform leads to political reform," she said.

"What I see in China is that economic reform is being used to suppress the political reform -- 'You have a job, okay, I'm happy.' So it isn't the natural peaceful evolution, which they really never subscribed to," she said.

Pelosi denied perceptions that she had softened her stance on her recent trip by not speaking out publicly in China on human rights.

She said she was able to raise human rights concerns at the highest level as House speaker, the third-highest leader under the US Constitution. She said she directly petitioned President Hu Jintao to free jailed rights activists.

Pelosi said she had no regrets about infuriating Beijing's leaders in 1991 by unfurling a banner in Tiananmen Square in tribute "to those who died for democracy in China."

"It isn't that my view has changed so much as my role has changed," Pelosi said. "This is a relentless pursuit of mine."

"If we do not speak out for human rights in China and Tibet, we lose moral authority to speak out for them anywhere," she said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disappointed many human rights activists in February by saying that rights concerns would not impede US cooperation with China on issues such as the global economic crisis.

But Clinton made a public appeal to China this week to come clean on how many died in Tiananmen Square and to free prisoners -- a plea quickly rejected and denounced by Beijing.

Pelosi on Thursday invited Tiananmen Square leaders including Wang Dan -- the former floppy-haired student who had topped Beijing's most-wanted list -- to join her at the US Capitol to commemorate the uprising.

She said that despite her record -- she joked she was the "most hated person" in China last year for her strong support to Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama -- Chinese leaders were "incredible" in their hospitality.

Pelosi, leading a congressional delegation, was invited by China to discuss climate change as the clock ticks to a December conference in Copenhagen which is set to approve a new treaty on cutting carbon emissions.

Pelosi reiterated her view that climate change was "a game-changer in our relationship with China," saying it could also improve the way Beijing and Washington discuss human rights.

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