On Saturday protestors in dozens of Chinese cities took to the streets to voice their anger at the Japanese government’s nationalization of the Diaoyu Islands (Senkaku Islands in Japanese) in the East China Sea as a flagrant violation of Chinese sovereignty.
In Beijing, thousands of protestors besieged the Japanese embassy, hurling eggs, bottles and anything else at hand – sometimes hitting unfortunate reporters stationed nearby – and tried to storm the barricades manned by hundreds of riot police. The unrest was apparently too unsettling for censors, who have made “Japanese embassy” a banned search term on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform.
Reports also poured in of attacks in several cities against Japanese nationals – including one person who was had ramen poured on him, another who had his eyeglasses broken and tourists who had bottles thrown at them – and vandalism of Japanese cars and restaurants and stores selling Japanese food and goods. One owner of a Japanese car even reportedly set his own car on fire in protest.
In Huangdao (黄岛), a commercial development district near the seaside city of Qingdao, a massive crowd (pictured up top) smashed their way into the local Jusco, a large Japanese department store, leaving heaps of wreckage in their wake.
@记者刘虎, a reporter in Guangzhou, tweets, “Today, the Mitsubishi elevator factory in Qingdao was set on fire, the Heiwado [a Japanese department store chain] in Changsha was broken into, the vandalism and rioting is so severe in Xi’an that many residents are scared to go out. Many cities are in a state of chaos. Is this any different from the Boxers and the Red Guards? Many cities are in chaos. The thugs have just changed their clothes…Why does history keep repeating itself? Where is the government’s ability to enforce the law?”
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