The United States said Monday it had lost hope for human rights progress in China 30 years after the crackdown on Tiananmen Square as Beijing, in rare official comments on the bloodshed, insisted it had "immunized" itself against turmoil.

As China tried to impose a media blackout ahead of Tuesday's anniversary of the 1989 assault on pro-democracy protesters, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saluted the "heroic protest movement," which he said still stirred "the conscience of freedom-loving people around the world."

"Over the decades that followed, the United States hoped that China's integration into the international system would lead to a more open, tolerant society. Those hopes have been dashed," Pompeo said.

"Today, Chinese citizens have been subjected to a new wave of abuses, especially in Xinjiang, where the Communist Party leadership is methodically attempting to strangle Uighur culture and stamp out the Islamic faith," he said.

An estimated one million Uighurs have been placed in detention in Xinjiang, a massive incarceration that China describes as vocational training to reduce radicalism.

On June 4, 1989, Beijing's communist rulers sent tanks and troops into Tiananmen Square, the symbolic heart of Chinese power, to crush a student-led movement that had been growing for seven weeks and featured a Goddess of Democracy statue that resembled the Statue of Liberty.

Hundreds of unarmed civilians, and possibly more than 1,000, were killed.

"We urge the Chinese government to make a full, public accounting of those killed or missing to give comfort to the many victims of this dark chapter of history," Pompeo said, calling on China to "release all those held for seeking to exercise" fundamental rights and freedoms.

- 'A political success' -

With younger Chinese having no direct memories of the Tiananmen movement, Beijing has gone to exhaustive lengths to prevent commemorations, with authorities detaining activists and livestreaming services conspicuously down for "technical" reasons.

But in an unusual step, China acknowledged -- and justified -- the Tiananmen crackdown in remarks geared at foreign audiences.

The English edition of the state-run Global Times tabloid called the handling of Tiananmen and its aftermath "a political success."

"As a vaccination for... Chinese society, the Tiananmen incident will greatly increase China's immunity against any major political turmoil in the future," it said in an editorial published Monday.

And Defense Minister Wei Fenghe, speaking Sunday at a regional forum in Singapore, defended the crackdown when he responded to an audience question.

"That incident was a political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence which is a correct policy," he said.

China's economy has soared since Tiananmen to become the second largest in the world, with the United States under president Bill Clinton welcoming Beijing into the global trading order and hoping that rising prosperity would bring improvements in human rights.

President Donald Trump has voiced regret over China's trajectory on economic grounds as well. He has slapped tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods and accused Beijing of rampant theft of US technology, setting off an accelerating trade battle.

The Trump administration has raised human rights repeatedly with China, although it treads much more lightly when addressing rights issues in US-allied countries.

Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the United States needed to look inward and be more consistent on human rights as it tackled China's record.

"Unlike 30 years ago, when America stood with the brave Chinese people in the face of repression, we hear deafening silence from the White House at best and voices fanning the flames at worst," Menendez told a Tiananmen commemoration event at the National Endowment for Democracy.

Tiananmen's key moments: hope crushed by soldiers and tanks
Hong Kong (AFP) June 4, 2019 - Tuesday marks the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing where Chinese troops fired on peaceful protesters, drawing global condemnation.

Students rallying for democracy and freedom had filled the symbolic heart of Chinese power, drawing in workers and intellectuals and inspiring demonstrations across the country.

But after weeks of protest, the movement was shattered by an overnight military assault that left hundreds of people dead -- by some estimates, more than 1,000 -- and a ruling party hell-bent on preventing any such future challenges to its power.

Three decades on, the crackdown remains one of the most sensitive subjects in mainland China and any mention of it is strictly censored.

Here are five key moments from that tumultuous spring.

- April 15: Death of a reformer -

Purged during the Cultural Revolution, Hu Yaobang was elected Chinese Communist Party leader in 1981 but dismissed in 1987 for his relaxed handling of a wave of student unrest.

Hu was popularly revered as a liberal reformer and protests first break out at Tiananmen Square two days after his death on April 15.

Fuelled by frustration from years of economic upheaval, the movement gathers pace as public mourning for the former party chief morphs into wider calls for political change and curbs to official corruption.

- April 27: Protests mushroom -

On April 25, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping says the protest movement seeks to topple the Communist Party -- a claim that forms the basis of an explosive editorial in the official People's Daily newspaper the next day.

Incensed by the editorial's rhetoric, crowds flood the streets of Beijing on April 27 and protests erupt across the nation.

A week later on the 70th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement -- the landmark protest against colonialism and imperialism that rocked China in 1919 -- a new mass protest breaks out in Beijing and other cities from Shanghai to Xi'an.

- May 13: Tiananmen occupied -

Hundreds of students occupy Tiananmen Square and begin a hunger strike on May 13, joined by thousands more in the following days.

Demonstrators disrupt a historic visit by the reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for the normalisation of Sino-Soviet ties on May 15.

Premier Li Peng meets student activists including Wu'er Kaixi and Wang Dan in a nationally televised meeting on May 18, in which students berate the party leaders.

- May 20: Martial law declared -

Party chief Zhao Ziyang emotionally pleads with hunger strikers to leave the square on May 19 in what is his last public appearance.

Sidelined for opposing the use of force, Zhao is sacked and put under house arrest for the next 16 years until his death.

Premier Li, later dubbed the "Butcher of Beijing" for his role in the bloody crackdown, declares martial law in parts of the capital on May 20.

But the students remain, erecting a statue titled the "Goddess of Democracy" facing the portrait of Mao Zedong on the wall of the Forbidden City.

- June 3-5: The bloody crackdown -

On the night of June 3, at the Muxidi crossroads, tanks break through the line of buses that had blocked their entry, and soldiers open fire on the crowd.

Advancing from all sides, the troops encircle Tiananmen Square in the early hours of June 4. Under the eyes of paratroopers with fixed bayonets, the remaining students leave the square.

Most of those slain are on the streets outside the square. The number of casualties is disputed, and the government has never released an official death toll.

But estimates from academics, witnesses and human rights groups have put the figure between several hundred to over a thousand.

On June 5, a solitary man blocks a column of tanks and armoured vehicles stretching far down the road in a minutes-long standoff before two men pull him away.

Captured on camera, "Tank Man" becomes one of the defining images of the 20th century.

His identity and fate are unknown.

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China detains activists, mutes livestreams ahead of Tiananmen anniversary
Beijing (AFP) May 30, 2019
Chinese authorities have detained several activists ahead of the politically explosive 30th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown of Tiananmen protests, rights groups said Thursday. Discussions of the 1989 pro-democracy protests and its military suppression are taboo in China, and authorities have rounded up or warned activists, lawyers and journalists ahead of the anniversary each year. Internet censors also usually work on overdrive, and this year popular livestreaming sites are shutting down ar ... read more