Anti-Japan protests spread across China, turn violent

More than 70,000 Chinese staged rallies Saturday in at least 28 cities to protest Japan's nationalization of a group of disputed islets, with Japanese businesses in some areas broken into, ransacked and torched.

The sheer scale of the protests was the largest since China and Japan normalized diplomatic ties in 1972, and surpassed the outcry in 2005 triggered by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to war symbol Yasukuni Shrine, according to a diplomatic source in Beijing.

This round of protests were triggered by Japan's announcement Tuesday that it bought privately owned land in the disputed Senkaku Islands, which China calls Diaoyu and Taiwan calls Tiaoyutai, to bring them under state control.

The largest demonstration, in Qingdao, Shandong Province, attracted as many as 30,000 people and evolved into rioting as protestors torched as many as 10 Japanese enterprises, including a Panasonic factory that suffered damage to a production line, Japanese sources said.

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