The recent wave of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China raises questions about Beijing's will to stabilize the situation. At the beginning of this month, demonstrators went on a rampage in Sichuan and Shenzhen in southern China, smashing windows of a Japanese supermarket and committing other acts of vandalism. Last weekend, protests spread to Beijing, Guangzhou and other cities.
In Beijing more than 10,000 people demonstrated, some of them hurling rocks at the Japanese Embassy and storming a Japanese restaurant. A huge anti-Japanese march in Beijing -- which took place despite an earlier Communist Party directive calling for calm -- indicated that the government and party might be loosening their grip on street protests. If the situation continues unabated, Beijing's ability to maintain law and order might be called into question.
Two immediate reasons are given for the mass protests. One is Japan's bid to gain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. The other is Tokyo's approval of history textbooks that many Chinese think misrepresent or sugarcoat some of Japan's wartime actions in Asia.