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The article looks at international relations between Japan and the rest of Asia. Where 15 years ago China was merely a pariah with economic potential, having recently massacred protesters in Tiananmen Square, it now has a better international reputation and a much admired economy. In both economic and political terms, Japan is no longer alone in Asia. There have been mass demonstrations in both communist China and democratic South Korea against Japan, accusing it of refusing to face up to its past. Japan has a poor relationship with both China and South Korea. If China's economy, its regional clout and its defence spending all continue to grow at something like their current rates, then China threatens to overshadow the whole region and, more pertinently, Japan, during the next quarter-century or so. That would injure Japan's national pride but could also hurt its national interests.

The article comments on relations between China and Japan, Asia's two greatest powers. Last year, China overtook America to become Japan's biggest trading partner. Japan has been China's biggest trading partner in three of the past four years. Trade rows have virtually disappeared. The two economies are increasingly integrated. But tensions are rising again. China and Japan have been rivals for the best part of a millennium. While the two economies are complementary in terms of output, they are competitors for resources. In both China and Japan these days opinion towards each other is quite varied. Tensions between these two great powers, both fully conscious of their economic and political interests and of the weight of history, probably cannot be defused altogether for as long as the two countries' political systems remain so different, with China communist and Japan a democracy. Tensions might be defused, though, if both governments agreed to seek ways to make history, and thus nationalism, less of a flashpoint.

The article examines the response of the Chinese government to anti-Japanese protests and demonstrations. "It's a scary country," Japan's trade minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, said of China this week, following demonstrations in several Chinese cities by thousands of protesters, some of whom smashed the windows of Japanese shops and restaurants and threw stones at Japanese diplomatic buildings. The protests first turned violent in the south-western city of Chengdu on April 2nd, and erupted with particular fury in Beijing a week later. They were the biggest to take place in China since tens of thousands took to the streets across the country in 1999 in response to the bombing of China's Belgrade embassy by American aircraft during the Kosovo war. In a country where public protest is usually quickly suppressed, anti-Japanese sentiment has proved hard for the authorities to handle. The authorities' dilemma is reflected in their handling of these protests, which began as a show of opposition (on the grounds that Japan has failed to show sufficient contrition for its wartime atrocities) to Japan's campaign for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. China's government worries that if it is seen as too weak towards Japan, or cracks down too hard, the protesters could turn against the party. In the last century, pro-democracy unrest in China was often closely linked with patriotic demonstrations. Many participants in the recent protests have been university students, a group kept under particularly close watch by the authorities since the student-led protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The nationalist genie, once unbottled, could prove hard for China to restrain.

This article focuses on the anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Both the Chinese and Japanese governments are stepping up efforts to defuse the anti-Japanese unrest that has erupted in several of China's biggest cities since early April. At an Asia-Africa summit in Jakarta last week, Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, reiterated Japan's apology for its wartime behaviour. Koizumi also met China's President Hu Jintao easing growing concerns that a relationship vital to East Asian stability could enter a freeze. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has begun to ratchet up pressure on the demonstrators. It has expressed particular concern about the use of mobile phones and the Internet to organise unauthorised demonstrations. As a result, well-wired Chinese nationalists have been given a choice: carry on using mobile phones and computers to organise anti-Japanese demonstrations and face the wrath of officialdom, or call a halt to the biggest protest movement of recent years. Most of the protesters have been students and office workers whose ability to mobilise using these tools has clearly unnerved the authorities, who are concerned that their next target might be the Communist Party.