By Trevor Marshallsea of AAP

BEIJING, Aug 30 AAP - Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer today stood firmly by his controversial comments that China had not caused only harm to Tibet, saying it was a view based on careful assessment and not on a desire to please his Chinese hosts.

And Mr Fischer denied comments by the Australia Tibet Council that he would only have been given a sanitised, carefully controlled view of Lhasa during the 1993 visit on which he bases his opinion, saying he had managed to slip out of the clutches of his Chinese handlers while there.

The ATC today said Mr Fischer's remarks appeared to contravene the coalition's foreign policy on the promotion of human rights in Tibet.

But Mr Fischer, currently on a week-long trip to China, stressed that while he believed China had made achievements in health and education since it annexed Tibet in 1951, there were also human rights concerns in the region.

"I just think we need to make very careful assessments and I have consistently been about that," said Mr Fischer, who spent a week in Lhasa as part of a National Party delegation.

"I acknowledge the human rights concerns, and I also acknowledge some of the other work which has been going on there, including the teaching of the Tibetan language in the improved schools in Tibet."

The ATC has criticised Mr Fischer for his comments in Shanghai this week that American actor Richard Gere, an advocate of Tibetan independence, had not "got it entirely right", saying Gere would have had a more realistic view of Tibet as he was not guided by Chinese officials.

The council also said Mr Fischer's comments were aimed at smoothing over Australia's recently rocky political relationship with China.

"I'm certainly not into the business of appeasement in any one direction or another," Mr Fischer said. "I am into the business of speaking factually from observations.

"To the surprise of my escorting officer on that particular visit to Tibet, let me now reveal, I was not always in the presence of escorting officers during thecourse of my visit to Lhasa."

Mr Fischer said while Australia should voice its human rights concerns, with a realistic view about its own problems, it was nonetheless important to stay on the right side of China, its sixth-biggest trading partner.

"But that's not at the expense of putting to one side some of the fundamental beliefs that we have in Australia," he said.

"But we must acknowledge that we don't have the perfect mantra for governance and system of governance, and legal systems, and non-corruptible police forces. These are things which other countries have developed different types of systems."

China has come in for widespread criticism for alleged human rights abuses in Tibet, including the repression of religious freedom, charges it constantly denies.

The issue has been thrown to the forefront of Sino-Australian relations due to the visit to Australia next month of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

This matter was expected to be raised tonight during a meeting between Mr Fischer and Chinese Premier Li Peng.