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Thirty years since the Tiananmen Square protests, China's economy has catapulted up the world rankings, yet political repression is harsher than ever.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims are held in re-education camps without charge, student activists face relentless harassment and leaders in the beleaguered dissident community have been locked up or simply vanished.

It's a far cry from the hopes of the idealistic student demonstrators, and a level of control far beyond what many imagined possible, even after the army's bloody crushing of the protests on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

Critics say the Tiananmen crackdown set the ruling Communist Party on its present course of ruthless suppression, summary incarceration and the frequent use of violence against opponents in the name of "stability maintenance."