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Anti-West mass demonstrations continue for 2nd day in China

Asian Economic News, April 21, 2008

BEIJING, April 20 Kyodo

Mass demonstrations against Western support for Tibet independence and Western media criticism of China continued for a second day Sunday in cities around China, state-run media reported.

The official Xinhua News Agency said protests, directed mainly against France but also U.S. broadcaster CNN, were held in the northern cities of Xi'an, Jinan, Harbin and Dalian, and the central city of Wuhan.

In Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, more than 1,000 people took part in the demonstration outside a local branch of the French supermarket chain Carrefour.

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Protestors held up placards criticizing alleged bias by CNN in its reports on China and condemning a pro-Tibet demonstrator who attempted to seize the Olympic torch from a disabled Chinese athlete during the torch relay in Paris earlier this month, Xinhua said.

Another 1,000 people in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, signed a 10-meter-long banner saying ''Support the Olympics and love our China,'' it said.

Similar protests were held Saturday in the cities of Beijing, Hefei, Wuhan, Kunming and Qingdao.

Legal demonstrations are rare in China because permission must be given in advance from the authorities. This weekend's protests are probably the largest held in the country since anti-Japanese demonstrations three years ago.

Branches of Carrefour have been the scene of many of the protests after Chinese Internet users alleged the firm has supported the Dalai Lama, a claim denied by the company.

The protests come after China's tightly-controlled state media ran extensive programming accusing the Dalai Lama and his supporters of organizing the antigovernment riots and protests in Tibet and neighboring provinces in recent weeks, an allegation he has repeatedly denied.

TV and newspapers have also given prominent coverage to accusations of bias in the Western media in its reports on Tibet -- a campaign largely targeted at CNN -- and have made a national hero of the disabled athlete Jin Jing, who fended off protestors while carrying the torch in a wheelchair in Paris.

State-run media carried commentaries and opinion pieces Sunday calling for demonstrators to calm their protests, apparent evidence that the government wants to limit any anti-Western anger in case it spirals out of the control before the Beijing Olympics in August.

Zhou Xing, an academic at the College of Art and Communication at Beijing Normal University was quoted by Xinhua as saying, ''What happened in France showed that some French did lack true understanding of China, including the Tibet issue, but I think what we should do is to improve foreigners' understanding about China. We had better not turn extreme.''

France's Ambassador to China Herve Ladsous wrote in an article submitted to the Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis News on Sunday that every effort was made to protect the Olympic torch during the relay in Paris and that any boycott of French goods in China would be unfair and counterproductive.

He said France has consistently said Tibet is an integral part of China, but he also expressed the hope that foreign reporters will be allowed into the region to allow more details to emerge about the violence that occurred in the Tibetan capital.

''I think that a great part of the misunderstandings which shocked a part of the Chinese public opinion could be dissipated by more transparency,'' he said.

Anti-West mass demonstrations continue for 2nd day in China

Asian Economic News, April 21, 2008

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