* Protesters damage US ambassador’s car
* China warns of trade, economic backlash
BEIJING: China moved quickly on Wednesday to snuff out anti-Japan protests after days of angry demonstrations over a territorial dispute forced Japanese businesses to shut their doors and threatened an economic backlash.
Relations between Asia’s two biggest economies have faltered badly, hitting their lowest point in decades on Tuesday when China marked the highly charged anniversary of Japan’s 1931 occupation of its giant neighbour.
Tension had run high on land and at sea, with four days of major protests in cities across China and Japanese and Chinese boats stalking each other in waters around a group of East China Sea islands, known by Japan as the Senkaku and by China as the Diaoyu.
Outside the embassy, police moved on a lone protester who had been shouting “Defeat small Japan” early on Wednesday.
Japanese businesses shut hundreds of stores and factories across China, some sending workers back to Japan in fear the protests would get out of hand.
Japan’s Beijing embassy had been under siege by protesters throwing water bottles, waving Chinese flags and chanting slogans evoking Japan’s occupation.
To prevent a repeat of those protests, large numbers of riot police were deployed around the embassy and Beijing’s subway operator closed the station nearest to the Japanese mission. (Reuters)
China’s Xi urges Japan to ‘rein in behaviour’
BEIJING: China’s leader-in-waiting, Xi Jinping, said today that Japan should ‘rein in its behaviour’ and stop undermining China’s sovereignty, state news agency Xinhua said, as tensions flared after a territorial dispute between the two countries.
Xi said Japan’s ‘purchase’ of the disputed islands was a farce, Xinhua said. Tension had run high on land and at sea, with four days of major protests in cities across China and Japanese and Chinese boats stalking each other in waters around a group of East China Sea islands, known by Japan as the Senkaku and by China as the Diaoyu. (Reuters)
