China rejects calls for apology

China told Japan bluntly yesterday it had no reason to apologise after weeks of anti-Japanese protests, some violent, in cities across China.

The Chinese are furious at a revised Japanese school textbook they say whitewashes atrocities during Japan's 1931-45 occupation of China. They also strongly oppose Tokyo's bid for a permanent seat alongside Beijing on the UN Security Council.

China denies tacitly encouraging the anti-Japanese unrest and has pledged to protect Japanese businesses and nationals.

"The Chinese government has never done anything for which it has to apologise to the Japanese people," Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told his visiting Japanese counterpart, Nobutaka Machimura.

"The main problem now is that the Japanese government has done a series of things that have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people... especially in its treatment of history."

Mr Machimura flew to China yesterday to try to heal relations between the two Asian powerhouses which are at their worst in decades. He demanded China deal with the protests swiftly even as they spread from Shanghai on Saturday to cities across the country yesterday.

Japan is asking for compensation for attacks on Japanese property in China and an official apology, but Mr Li did not offer either, Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima told reporters.

Mr Machimura said he was disappointed by China's response. "They kept saying that the root of the problem was the history issue and we could not find common ground and I found this attitude disappointing," he told a news conference.

"Also it was unfortunate that China's top leaders could not seem to understand that the Japanese people were greatly shocked by what has happened," he said.

In the third weekend of violent protests, thousands marched on Saturday to Japan's consulate in Shanghai, smashing windows, pelting it with paint bombs and eggs and attacking Japanese restaurants along the way.

China's official Xinhua news agency put the number of protesters in Shanghai at 20,000. Two Japanese were slightly injured in the city, home to thousands of Japanese firms and about 34,000 Japanese expatriates, the Japanese consulate in Shanghai said.

Hong Kong Cable Television said there were protests in about 10 Chinese cities, including southern Dongguan and southwestern Chengdu.

Several thousand people marched in Hong Kong and as many as 2,000 people marched through the streets of the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, Kyodo news agency said. Demonstrators hurled bottles and eggs at the Japanese consulate in the city.