Japan's Meti minister Shoichi Nakagawa says Chinese protests boost investment Risks!

Tensions between Tokyo and Beijing have been fueled by
disagreement over the U.N. Security Council, gas
resources in disputed seas and new Japanese textbooks
that critics say minimize Japan's wartime offenses. Is
biggest risk now for China to maximize Japanese investors
fears into a "scary country" ?

quotes :

"Japan's trade minister Shoichi Nakagawa said
anti-Japanese demonstrations in China are raising
concerns among international companies about investing
in the world's most populous country.

In Shanghai, 20,000 people took to the streets
yesterday, hurling stones and paint at the Japanese
consulate and vandalizing Japanese restaurants in a
second weekend of demonstrations across China, Japan's
biggest export market.

The protests ``are amplifying fears among companies in
Japan and elsewhere that they will face devastation
should they offend China,'' Nakagawa said today on a
Fuji television talk show. ``China didn't take action to
prevent the protests or stop them afterward, and I don't
think it's because the government was unable to so.''

Japan's Foreign Minister is scheduled to visit China
today as tensions between the neighboring countries
mount over offshore territorial disputes and what China
says is Japan's refusal to apologize for atrocities the
Japanese military committed during its occupation of
China before and during World War II.

People are ``dissatisfied with Japan's attitude and
action on a series of issues such as its history of
aggression,'' Jiao Yang, Shanghai municipal spokeswoman,
said in remarks reported by Xinhua News Agency, China's
official voice on political issues.

China's failure to act against piracy and counterfeiting
already pose risks to investing in China for companies
in Japan, the European Union and the U.S., Nakagawa
said.

Disputes between Japan and China have flared over both
countries' claims to drilling rights in disputed waters
of the East China Sea and over annual visits by Japanese
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his predecessors to
Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals lie among
dead soldiers being honored.

Protests also target new Japanese textbooks that critics
say gloss over wartime atrocities committed by the
Japanese, most notably the 1937 Nanjing massacre, in
which some historians say hundreds of thousands of
civilians died.

Nakagawa said he doesn't understand why those
long-standing issues have suddenly sparked the recent
outburst of protests.

``I have little clue as to why now,'' Nakagawa said.

end of quotes