Monday February 26 3:53 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Monday that China's human rights record deteriorated further in 2000, issuing a report certain to anger Beijing as President George W. Bush works out his approach to the Communist giant.

The State Department, releasing its annual global human rights report, also announced that Washington would again sponsor a motion at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva this year condemning Beijing's record.

China, by diplomatic maneuvers, has avoided even a vote on the resolution in recent years but human rights groups and members of Congress urged Bush to go ahead, fearing China's success in evading rebuke was undermining the Geneva process.

The State Department report, which regularly draws expressions of outrage and accusations of American hypocrisy from Beijing, said: "China's poor human rights record worsened during the year.''

It added: "The government's respect for religious freedom deteriorated markedly ... as the government conducted crackdowns against underground Christian groups and Tibetan Buddhists and destroyed many houses of worship.''

It detailed widespread use of torture and condemned the crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Many Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested, including many in mass arrests in public places like Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Olympic Protest

In another potential blow to China relations, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives' International Relations Committee, Tom Lantos of California, said he would introduce a resolution in two weeks opposing China's bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

Lantos, who described China's rights record as deplorable, sponsored a similar resolution in 1993, which passed with a bi-partisan majority. At that time the International Committee decided to grant Sydney the 2000 games rather than Beijing.

The U.S. rights report said that in 2000 thousands of unregistered religious institutions in China were closed or destroyed, hundreds of Falun Gong leaders were jailed, sent to ''re-education through labor'' camps or to mental institutions.

"Various sources report that approximately 100 or more Falun Gong practitioners died as a result of torture and mistreatment in custody,'' it added.

At the same time, the report noted that decentralization by the communist authorities and other economic reforms had ''markedly reduced state control over citizens' daily lives.''

Many Chinese had more individual choice, greater access to information and expanded economic opportunity, it said.

Parmly said the Chinese government faced a dilemma. While trying to suppress any activity seen as a threat to the government it faced a people striving to play a greater role in the international system.

Release of the report coincided with a visit to Beijing by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, who urged the Chinese authorities to scrap the "re-education through labor'' system it has used to lock up dissidents and many Falun Gong members.

Although compiled from data gathered under former President Clinton, who took what many Republicans consider too soft a line toward Beijing, the report added to the impression of a tougher line emerging under Bush. ... The State Department report was being posted at its Web site www.state.gov.