Japanese textbook sparks southern China protests

BEIJING -- Protests over a controversial new Japanese textbook erupted in southern China yesterday, a day after a violent rally in Beijing. Tokyo demanded an apology and better protection for its citizens as a simmering diplomatic row threatened ties between the Asian nations.

Demonstrations against Japan have spread since Tokyo last week approved new textbooks critics say fail to address the brutal wartime invasion by the Japanese military and its occupation of Asian nations in the first half of the 20th century, including how troops forced Asian women into sexual slavery.

On Saturday, about 1,000 demonstrators threw rocks and broke windows at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing after a rally by more than 6,000 people in the university district in the capital's northwest. Some burned a Japanese flag.

The protest was the biggest in tightly controlled Beijing since 1999, when the US Embassy was besieged after NATO warplanes bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo.

Most protests in China's capital are banned, but the government occasionally allows brief rallies by a few dozen people outside the Japanese Embassy on key war anniversaries. Anti-Japanese sentiment runs deep among Chinese, as many resent what they see as Tokyo's failure to atone for its wartime aggression.

China said yesterday that it had ordered anti-Japanese protesters in Beijing to stay calm and sane, and mobilized extra police to maintain order.

Japanese officials, however, said not enough was done.

When the protesters arrived at the Japanese Embassy, security forces let them throw stones, embassy spokesman Ide Keiji said. ''They let them do that. They didn't stop. They didn't arrest," he said.

Japan's ambassador to China, Anami Koreshige, called the violent rally in Beijing ''gravely regrettable" and called on Chinese authorities to protect Japanese citizens and businesses, as well as the embassy and other consulates in China, Keiji said.

Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura of Japan also summoned China's ambassador yesterday to lodge a protest and demand an apology and compensation for damages.

Keiji said Japan had used diplomatic channels to repeatedly request the protection of Japanese interests last week following demonstrations in the southern cities of Shenzhen and Chengdu and had received assurances from Beijing.

Meanwhile, China said Japan should do more to improve relations between the two nations.

''The Japanese have to do more things conducive to enhancing mutual trust and maintaining the relations between the two countries," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

He added that Japan should adopt an ''earnest attitude and appropriate ways to deal with . . . the feelings of the Chinese people."

Protests continued yesterday, as about 10,000 demonstrators surrounded a Japanese-run Jasco supermarket in the southern city of Shenzhen, Keiji said. They shouted ''Boycott Japanese goods!" and threw plastic bottles of mineral water at the store.

About 3,000 people also marched toward the Japanese Consulate General in the southern city of Guangzhou for a peaceful, spontaneous demonstration, and police were maintaining order, said a spokesman with the Guangzhou municipal government who refused to give his name.