FORMER United States president George Bush said yesterday that economic expansion would lead to greater freedom in China, and the US and other nations should co-operate in the country's development, rather than threatening sanctions.
''The expanding middle-class and demand for pluralism will inevitably move China forward to more individual freedom and more human rights.
''A China in which people benefit from not just the material attributes of wealth, but the emotional, spiritual and intellectual benefits of freedom,'' Mr Bush said in a luncheon speech at the Regent Hotel.
''Some see a China torn by internal divisions - with region pitted against region - something that in my view would be disastrous - divided as it was in the 1920s, the 1850s, way back before then,'' Mr Bush said.
''I see a much more promising scenario: China as open, responsible, a global economic superpower,'' Mr Bush said in his Citibank Asian Leadership Series address.
The former president, accompanied by his wife, Barbara, spoke warmly of the time they had spent together in China, when he headed the US mission there in the early 1970s, and reminisced about meetings with senior leader Deng Xiaoping and the late Chairman Mao Zedong.
Mr Bush was unstinting in his praise for China, criticising US congressional opposition to Beijing's bid for the Olympic Games and lauding the Chinese leadership.