China refused to apologise for anti-Japanese protests on Sunday, its foreign minister Li Zhaoxing telling his Japanese counterpart: ”The Chinese government has never done anything for which it has to apologise to the Japanese people.”
The Japanese Freign Minister, Nobutaka Machimura, had flown to Beijing hoping to improve mutual relations, which have fallen to their lowest point for 33 years because of a territorial dispute, Chinese boycotts of Japanese products and Tokyo’s approval of a new history textbook which ignores Japan’s wartime atrocities in China.
But he was greeted by news of further anti-Japanese rallies in six cities and a rebuff from Li, who said: ”The main problem now is that the Japanese government has done a series of things that have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people … especially in its treatment of history.”
These hurt feelings were evident in the southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, where up to 10 000 demonstrated outside Japanese stores and chanted calls for a boycott of Japanese goods.
Smaller protests were reported in Dongguan, Zhuhai and Chengdu. Most were peaceful, but in the north-eastern city of Shenyang the Japanese consulate said some protesters had thrown stones at the building.
It was the third weekend of increasingly large and in some cases violent demonstrations.
In Shanghai, tens of thousands took to the streets on Saturday in the biggest political demonstration the city has seen for more than 10 years.
Mobs smashed Japanese restaurants, damaged Japanese-made cars and threw eggs, stones and paint at the country’s consulate. At least two Japanese people were attacked and injured.
Machimura said his government was greatly concerned about the situation.
He called on China to protect Japanese property, in accordance with the rules of the international community.
Earlier the Japanese trade minister had warned that China could face economic repercussions if the violence continued. ”People around the world are wondering whether it’s all right to pursue economic activity [in China],” the Kyodo news agency quoted Shoichi Nakagawa saying.
The foreign ministry spokesperson, Hasuhisa Takashima, said Japan had proposed a joint study of the history of the two countries, a fund to promote exchanges of students and a meeting between the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, and the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, when they are at a regional conference in Indonesia later this week.
Apart from talks in third countries, the two countries’ leaders have not met since 1999. Beijing has repeatedly turned down requests for a meeting on the grounds that the Chinese people are offended by Koizumi’s annual visits to the Yasukuni shrine, which honours Japan’s fallen soldiers, including a dozen war criminals.
Machimura offered no concessions on this issue, but repeated his government’s contrition for the war. ”Japan as a nation expresses deep remorse, deep regret and sincere apologies to the people of China and other Asian countries,” Takashima quoted him saying.
The Chinese government has authorised or condoned several of the recent protests, but there are signs that it is now trying to rein in such feelings.
The authorities acted this weekend to block a follow-up to last Sunday’s march in Beijing . Hundreds of police officers checked the identities of people entering Tiananmen Square and a sharply worded public announcement warned people that they would be punished for joining an unauthorised march.
In a front page editorial on Sunday the People’s Daily called on the public to ”maintain social stability”. – Guardian Unlimited Â