Anti-Japan protests reignite in China
Anti-Japan protests reignited across China on Tuesday, forcing Japanese firms in the country to suspend operations, as a crisis over a territorial dispute escalated on the anniversary of Japan's pre-war invasion of its giant neighbour.
Relations between Asia's two biggest economies faltered badly on the anniversary, with emotions running high on the streets and also out at sea where two Japanese activists landed on an island at the centre of the dispute.
China reacted swiftly to the news of the landing, which risked inflaming a situation that already ranks as China's worst outbreak of anti-Japan sentiment in decades. Beijing described the landing as provocative, lodged a complaint with Tokyo and said it reserved the right to take further action.
The unlawful landing of the Japanese right-wingers on the Chinese territory of the Diaoyu islands was a gravely provocative action violating Chinese territorial sovereignty, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement.
The dispute over the uninhabited group of islands in the East China Sea -- known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China -- led to a day of anti-Japan protests which Japanese expatriates fear could peak later on Tuesday.
Japanese businesses shut hundreds of stores and plants across China and Japan's embassy in Beijing again came under siege by protesters hurling water bottles, waving Chinese flags, and chanting anti-Japan slogans evoking war-time enmity.
Wipe out all Japanese dogs, read one banner held aloft by one of thousands of protesters marching on the embassy, which was ringed by riot police standing
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