"I don't think it's bad," the governor said of the pressure being put on China to confront concerns over human rights. "In trade issues, we always exert pressure. That's how we made progress. But it has to be pressure combined with appropriate timing."

And now may be the right time, Huntsman said. He was among the top candidates to become U.S. ambassador to China in 2001 and led a trade mission as governor to Beijing and Shanghai nearly two years ago.

China had to anticipate protests when it bid for the Olympics seven years ago, the governor said, suggesting reformers within the Chinese government were behind the push to get the Games.

"This is unprecedented for the Chinese to subject themselves to this kind of scrutiny and spotlight, and they knew in 2001 that would be part and parcel of hosting the Games," he said. "The reformers won out years ago by saying this is a good thing. There will be change."

The top leaders of the Beijing Games, Huntsman said, are relatively young and high-ranking members of the Communist Party's Politburo. Xi Jinping, the head of the Beijing organizing committee, is seen as a successor to China's current leader.

"They've made a huge investment in the outcome of the Olympics," Huntsman said. Those investments include some reforms, such as the creation of a more powerful ministry of the environment and naming an envoy to Sudan.

The current controversy over Tibet, the governor predicted, is "just the beginning of a litany of issues that will be brought up." The Chinese, he said, appear to be "willing to embrace greater change moving forward."

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