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New anti-Japan protests erupt as Japan's FM inChina
SHANGHAI (AP) — Japan's foreign minister flew to Beijing Sunday to deliver a protest over violent anti-Japanese rallies, as Chinese police allowed new demonstrations over Tokyo's wartime past and its bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat.

  As many as 20,000 turned out in Shanghai for the third weekend of anti-Japanese protests.  
AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Tokyo denounced anti-Japanese violence in Shanghai, where police on Saturday let 20,000 rioters break windows at Japan's Consulate, vandalize restaurants and damage cars. Thousands more protested in other Chinese cities.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK quoted Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura as saying before his departure that he would tell Beijing that, "It's possible that Japan-China relations as a whole, including on the economic front, could decline to a serious state."

A dozen police officers stood guard in the arrivals area of the Beijing airport as Machimura's flight arrived from Tokyo, but there was no sign of protesters. Machimura didn't speak to reporters at the airport. He was to meet his Chinese counterpart later Sunday and said he would lodge a protest about China's failure to stop the rallies.

Relations between Beijing and Tokyo have plunged to their lowest point in decades prompted by disputes over the Security Council, natural gas resources in disputed seas and new Japanese textbooks that critics say minimize Japan's wartime offenses.

On Sunday, about 1,000 protesters marched toward the Japanese Consulate in the northeastern city of Shenyang but police kept them away from the building. The crowd threw stones, but a Japanese diplomat, Shoji Dai, said they fell short and there were no broken windows. He said the protest broke up after about 90 minutes.

In the southern city of Shenzhen, as many as 10,000 protesters marched near a Japanese-owned department store, Hong Kong Cable TV said.

Smaller rallies were held in nearby Dongguan and Zhuhai and in Chengdu in the west, but no violence was reported. Police tried to block a planned protest in the southern business capital of Guangzhou, shooing passers-by away from a stadium where a march was to start.

Some have suggested that Beijing permitted earlier protests to undermine Tokyo's Security Council campaign. Beijing regards Tokyo as a rival for regional dominance, and is unlikely to want to give up its status as the only Asian government with a permanent seat on the U.N. council.

But Beijing called last week for calm, apparently afraid of causing more damage to relations with Tokyo or encouraging others to take to the streets to demonstrate against corruption or demand political reforms.

The Communist Party newspaper People's Daily called in a front-page editorial Sunday for the public to "maintain social stability."

It didn't mention the protests, but said "frictions and problems of various kinds ... can only be settled in an orderly manner by abiding by the law and with a sober mind."

On Saturday, thousands of police watched as demonstrators — some shouting "Kill the Japanese!" — threw stones, eggs and plastic bottles and broke windows at the Japanese Consulate in Shanghai. The crowd vandalized Japanese restaurants and damaged Japanese-made cars. Police let the protest proceed even after state newspapers said no demonstrations there had been authorized.

Shanghai's government blamed Japan for the violence, saying the demonstrations were prompted by "Japan's wrong attitudes and actions on a series of issues such as its history of aggression," the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing city government spokeswoman Jiao Yang.

Many Chinese believe Japan has never truly shown remorse for atrocities committed during its pre-World War II invasion of China.

Thousands of people held peaceful protests Saturday in Hangzhou and Tianjin. In Beijing, hundreds of police blanketed Tiananmen Square in the heart of the capital to block a planned demonstration.

In Japan, meanwhile, a man set himself on fire in front of a Chinese Consulate in apparent anger at the anti-Japanese rallies in China. Police extinguished the fire and the unidentified man was taken to a hospital with burns on his left hand and across his body.