Posted on 08/19/2012 5:57:43 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Protests against Japan broke out in at least eight Chinese cities on Sunday, as authorities allowed thousands of people to show their anger over a bitter territorial row between the two nations.
The demonstrations—which saw Japanese shops and cars targeted in some cities—erupted after Japanese nationalists landed on an island claimed by both countries.
The latest anti-Japan protests are thought to be the most widespread in China since 2005, when several cities saw demonstrations over a slew of grievances including Japan’s wartime atrocities.
In the southern city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, protesters waved Chinese flags and shouted slogans as they marched on major streets, with the numbers swelling to about 1,000, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Zhang Pei, one of the participants, said protesters were marching toward the train station on the border with Hong Kong.
“The demonstration is strung out for seven to eight kilometers. Many police are escorting us along the street,” he told AFP by telephone.
Protests are usually swiftly put down in China, but one analyst said the government had an interest in allowing them to go ahead, for a time.
“They’re using the popular card to put pressure on Japan,” Willy Lam, a China expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told AFP.
“The (communist) party leadership realizes nationalism is a double-edged sword. If they see a possibility of the protests escalating, they will give the signals to put an end to this.”
Japanese media reported that protesters damaged Japanese businesses and vehicles in Shenzhen and in the eastern city of Hangzhou.
More than 100 people gathered near the complex housing the Japanese consulate in the southern city of Guangzhou, chanting “Japan get out of the Diaoyu Islands,” Xinhua said.
China calls the archipelago Diaoyu, but it is controlled by Japan, which calls it Senkaku.
Witnesses said demonstrations also took place in Shanghai and the southwestern city of Chengdu, where protests shut down a Japanese department store and a branch of the Japanese clothing store Uniqlo.
Anti-Japan protests also took place in Qingdao, on the east coast, as well as in the northeastern cities of Shenyang and Harbin.
A demonstrator in Hangzhou, which is close to Shanghai, put the number of protesters there at about 1,000. They marched and chanted slogans before dispersing.
Anti-Japan protests have broken out in several Chinese cities in the past week, including the capital Beijing, state media and witnesses said.
They followed the detention of 14 pro-China activists and journalists who had sailed from Hong Kong to land on the islands. They were deported on Friday.
China has a cute little scam going on where they land people on these little rocks scattered along important trade routes and then provide infrastructure to sustain them.
Naturally they then have to provide “defense” for these rocks and so move troops and equipment there.
The next steps are to claim “territorial waters” around them, neatly closing off large areas and claiming them for China.
Currently, we are ignoring these claims but as China expands its Navy that will become problematic...
Many large Japanese corporations have outsourced production to China.
Hey Gay State,
Recall if you will that the Japanese invaded China in maybe 1937. Ever heard of the rape of Nanking? The Japanese were monstrous in their treatment of the Chinese.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/nanking.htm
Japan, aka pervertland (way off topic) is also in a dispute with South Korea over the Dokdo islands.
Go South Korea!
Agreed. what they are doing near Oz isn’t going to help the situation at all either.
Of course with the way the libs play with defense, we had best learn Chinese
And the chinese murdered many tens of millions of their own people.
Are these rocks the Paracel and Spratly island groups long disputed by China, Japan, Vietnam AND the Philippines?
S’posed to be crude in them thar rocks. Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea.
Funny, in last week's reports Chinese nationalists were doing the trespassing...
yeah I have nothing good to say about the Chinese
I was in China during the ‘Nankin protest riots” back in 2005.
It was staged by the gov’t. Taking a shortcut, I stumbled into a company of chi-coms hanging out in an alley. As soon as Japan apologized for their occupation, the troops were to break up the protests.
Kabuki theater !
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