BEIJING: China is uneasily anticipating a bumpy road ahead in relations with the United States now that the Democrats' victory in US mid-term elections have placed one of Beijing's most ardent critics in charge of Congress.

Nancy Pelosi, who became speaker-elect of the House of Representatives, climbed the Democratic Party ranks in Congress savaging China for its human rights abuses. She opposed awarding China normal trading relations throughout the 1990s and giving Beijing the 2008 Olympics, seeking to deny the country apparent US approval for its behaviour.

With Pelosi, 66, now in a more powerful public pulpit, China is expecting similarly critical treatment.

''This old woman has a great bias against China, possibly creating some static in China- relations,'' Jin Canrong, an America watcher at Renmin University in Beijing, said in a report on Wednesday on Sina.com, one of China's most popular Internet portals.

Major changes in US policy toward China aren't likely, said Chinese experts, Jin included. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, in the government's first public reaction, called on Congress to ''play a constructive role in promoting our relations''.

Though wary of each other, the administrations of George W. Bush and Hu Jintao have learned to manage the relationship, emphasising areas where they can cooperate, like North Korea, while keeping disagreements, such as Beijing's ballooning trade surplus, from spoiling overall ties.

Rather, Pelosi and her rise personify a shift in tone, analysts and Chinese media said, bringing to the fore issues Beijing dislikes to air publicly: China's human and labour rights abuses, its trade and currency policies and its efforts to befriend governments like Iran and Zimbabwe that Washington is at odds with.

In a sign of China's nervousness, Foreign Ministry officials began questioning American officials and academics about Pelosi's becoming speaker.—AP