The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Political, civil tensions arise across China
Dispute with Japan, leader’s absence garner attention.
BEIJING — The reappearance on Saturday of a top Chinese leader who had vanished from public view removes one question mark facing the Communist Party, but a wave of protests against Japan are a sign that internal power struggles are far from over.
On Saturday, the diplomatic tensions boiled over with hundreds of demonstrators throwing rocks and eggs at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, while smaller protests erupted in up to 40 other Chinese cities. Unconfirmed reports said some of the protests turned violent, with protesters said to have burned down a Toyota dealership.
Demonstrators were demanding that Japan give China control of a small group of islands known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan.
Both countries claim them as part of their territory, but Japan exercises control over them.
Because any public gatherings are tightly controlled in China, it seemed likely that at least one faction in the government approved of Saturday’s protests. Protesters near the embassy in Beijing carried Chinese flags and pictures of Mao Zedong.
The police limited the number of protesters on the street outside the embassy; some people ate lunch on the roadside while they waited for their turn to march. Others waved banners with slogans about taking control of the islands or chanted, “Death to Japan.”
Some analysts see a relationship between the protests and the political tensions surrounding the disappearance of Xi Jinping, the vice president of China, who had been out of public view for two weeks before reappearing on Saturday.
Xi attended National Science Popularization Day on the campus of the China Agricultural University in Beijing, according to two photographs posted on the website of the state-run Xinhua news agency and a report on the evening news.
No explanation was given for his absence, which is unusual for Chinese leaders, whose activities are chronicled daily in the state-run media. In the past two weeks, Xi canceled meetings with at least two foreign dignitaries, while government spokesmen deflected questions about him.