China To Japan: Blame Yourselves

China on Sunday rebuffed Japanese demands to apologize for protests that damaged the Japanese Embassy and a consulate, while authorities allowed new demonstrations over Tokyo's wartime history and campaign for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat.

"The Chinese government has never done anything that wronged the Japanese people," Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told his visiting Japanese counterpart as China allowed new demonstrations in at least six cities.

Li said Japan, instead, was to blame for "a series of things that have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people" over issues such as relations with rival Taiwan and "the subject of history" - a reference to Japanese school textbooks that critics say minimize World War II atrocities.

Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura appealed to Li to protect Tokyo's diplomats and citizens as his government denounced violence on Saturday in Shanghai, where police allowed 20,000 rioters to break windows and damage restaurants and cars.

"I wish the Chinese government would sincerely handle this matter under international regulations," Machimura said, apparently referring to treaties that obligate Beijing to protect diplomatic missions.

Japan's Kyodo News agency later quoted Machimura as calling China's failure to offer an apology or compensation "very unfortunate."

"China's top leaders seem not to understand the huge shock that the Japanese public has felt over this issue," Machimura was quoted as saying.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK quoted Machimura as saying earlier Sunday in Tokyo that he would warn Beijing that relations, "including on the economic front, could decline to a serious state."

Relations between Beijing and Tokyo have soured amid disagreements over the Security Council, gas resources in disputed seas and the new schoolbooks that critics say gloss over Japan's abuses such as germ warfare and sex slavery during its conquest of Asia.

Machimura said the two governments would discuss the gas dispute next month, Kyodo reported.

In the southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, thousands of protesters called for a boycott of Japanese goods, a Japanese diplomat said. Smaller, peaceful rallies were held in nearby Dongguan and Zhuhai and in Chengdu in the west.

In Shenyang in the northeast, about 1,000 protesters marched to the Japanese Consulate but were kept away by police. The crowd threw stones but didn't break windows, said a consulate official, Shoji Dai. He said the protest ended in about 90 minutes.

In Shenzhen, two groups — one with up to 10,000 people — marched past a Japanese-owned Jusco department store calling for a boycott of Japanese goods, said Chiharu Tsuruoka, Japan's vice consul general in Guangzhou.

Another 500 protesters were outside another Jusco branch in Guangzhou, Tsuruoka said.

Earlier Sunday, police tried to block a planned protest in Guangzhou, shooing passers-by away from a stadium where a march was to start. Police stood guard outside Japan's Guangzhou Consulate.

Some have suggested that Beijing permitted earlier protests to undermine Tokyo's Security Council campaign. Beijing regards Tokyo as a rival for regional dominance, and is unlikely to want to give up its status as the only Asian government with a permanent seat on the U.N. council.

But Beijing called last week for calm, apparently afraid of causing more damage to relations with Tokyo or encouraging others to take to the streets to demonstrate against corruption or demand political reforms.

The Communist Party newspaper People's Daily called in a front-page editorial Sunday for the public to "maintain social stability."

It didn't mention the protests, but said "frictions and problems of various kinds ... can only be settled in an orderly manner by abiding by the law and with a sober mind."

Japan's trade minister warned Sunday that the violence would hurt China's reputation and economy.

"People around the world are wondering whether it's all right to pursue economic activity (in China)," Trade Minister Shoichi Nakagawa was quoted as saying by Kyodo.

On Saturday, thousands of police watched as demonstrators — some shouting "Kill the Japanese!" — threw stones, eggs and plastic bottles and broke windows at the Japanese Consulate in Shanghai. The crowd vandalized Japanese restaurants and damaged Japanese-made cars.

Shanghai government spokeswoman Jiao Yang blamed Japan for the violence, saying the demonstrations were prompted by "Japan's wrong attitudes and actions on a series of issues such as its history of aggression," the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

On Sunday, the consulate was ringed by hundreds of police, some armed with shields, but there was no sign of new protests. The consulate's walls were splattered blue and black from paint bombs.

Many Chinese believe Japan has never truly shown remorse for atrocities committed during its pre-World War II invasion of China.

Thousands of people held peaceful protests Saturday in Hangzhou and Tianjin. In Beijing, hundreds of police blanketed Tiananmen Square in the heart of the capital to block a planned demonstration.