Friday, September 21

Japanese Protests in China

In recent days protests have broken out all over China against Japanese. Chinese have been having banners with "kill all Japanese", "Out with the Japanese Devils", "Diaoyu island belong to China" etc etc. This small island group called diaoyu in chinese and senkaku in Japan are just some rocks in the sea. Some have said they contain rich energy resources but I find that almost impossible since it is a volcanic and earthquake sensitive area. If there ever was any oil or gas it would have burned away long ago because of the activity below the sea. 

A lot of people have been trashing their own cars because it was Japanese made and people started boycotting Japanese products and some factory assembly lines in many palces all over China were sabotaged. If this helps in the long run I'm not sure, seems to meet its just about destroying Chinese property and not a direct blow to Japan. 

The Japanese embassy area was totally shut down, they let in people in groups of 100 to protest outside the embassy. People burned Japanese flags, threw eggs and fruit on the embassy while shouting all kinds of things. No one was hurt in the demonstrations that lasted for about 4 days. Now it has cooled down and when I passed the embassy yesterday there were no protesters at all. Interesting that feelings can boil over so fast. One of the reasons for this is the history, Japan occupied China exactly 81 years ago now so there was a memorial day for that. I just hope that the island dispute can be solved peacefully and people can get back to their daily routines. 

Riot police

 Complete lock-down, hundreads of polices were positioned here to guard the road






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