against the Japanese, that is

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiap ... n.protest/

China protests again target Japan
Sunday, April 10, 2005 Posted: 0713 GMT (1513 HKT)

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- As Japan's ambassador called on the Chinese government to take stronger measures to protect Japanese citizens in China, thousands of Chinese citizens took to the streets in another protest to call for a boycott of Japanese products and to shout anti-Japanese slogans.

Sunday's protest by about 3,000 protesters who surrounded Japan's consulate in Guangzhou, capital of the southern Guangdong province, followed Saturday's angry demonstration at Japan's embassy in Beijing.

Video of Sunday's protest showed a mostly youthful crowd carrying anti-Japanese banners and Chinese flags while they sang, shouted and chanted. Several Japanese flags were burned.

Japanese press attache Ide Keiji told reporters Sunday that Japan's envoy Koreshige Anami met Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister and called Saturday's protest, in which rocks and bottles were thrown at the Japanese embassy, "gravely regrettable."

Ambassador Koreshige also asked the Chinese government to take all necessary measures to protect Japanese citizens in China, something he said has not been done, Ide said.

The Japanese spokesman said the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister expressed regret on behalf of his government for the Saturday protest and said the Chinese government could not allow it to happen again.

The protests are targeted at Japan's bid to become a permanent U.N. Security Council member and have been made more emotional by Chinese objections to how Japanese school textbooks recount Japan's 20th century military campaigns.

The protesters in Beijing Saturday chanted anti-Japanese slogans, sang patriotic songs, waved Chinese flags and carried banners critical of Japan.

Some protesters threw rocks and plastic water bottles toward the embassy gate. The messages included a call for China to boycott Japanese products.

Hundreds of military police in riot gear lined up outside the embassy, while hundreds more police blocked nearby streets to keep the number of protesters down. Police moved in to end the protest after about an hour.

It was the biggest protest in the Chinese capital since 1999 when angry crowds demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy after three Chinese were killed when the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, in what was then the Yugoslav capital, was accidentally bombed.

That came during the NATO air war against the Serb-led forces in the Serbian province of Kosovo, where Serbs and ethnic Albanians had been fighting.

-- CNN correspondent Tara Duffy contributed to this report

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This comes following the sacking of a respected professor of journalism at Beijing university, after he dared to challenge the Communist Party's authoritarian grip on the state media.

The message here is this: protest all you want as long as you direct it towards someone else.

What do they need to protest for? They have jobs for the most part, and consumer products. Why on earth should they be unhappy with the current system? BAAAAAAH!