Japan has warned its nationals to stay away from a major anti-Japanese rally planned in Beijing today as tension rises between the Asian neighbors.
"According to Internet information here ... 10,000-20,000 people will rally against Japan and Japanese products" in Zhongguancun, the high-tech neighborhood of Beijing, the Japanese embassy in China said.
"Please behave cautiously and stay away from anti-Japanese rallies or protests if you witness one," the embassy said, while urging Japanese nationals to be "careful not to be involved in unnecessary trouble."
Japan ignited a new row with China on Tuesday by authorizing for school use a nationalist-written history textbook that Beijing says glosses over Japanese wartime atrocities.
China's foreign ministry called in Japan's envoy to Beijing to express its "indignation" at the approval of the textbooks and a retail association called a boycott of a series of Japanese products.
But Japan has hit back at China, saying Beijing was whipping up anti-Japanese sentiment.
The Asian neighbors have increasingly been at loggerheads over memories of Japan's bloody occupation of China and a growing dispute over scarce energy resources.
At the same time, however, trade has been skyrocketing with China overtaking the US as Japan's top commercial partner last year as Japanese firms eye China's vast labor pool and emerging consumer market.
The foreign ministry reported April 1 that the number of Japanese people living in China shot up by 28.5 percent year-on-year, with Shanghai now having the third biggest Japanese expatriate population following New York and Los Angeles.
People can preregister to receive their NT$10,000 (US$325) cash distributed from the central government on Nov. 5 after President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday signed the Special Budget for Strengthening Economic, Social and National Security Resilience, the Executive Yuan told a news conference last night. The special budget, passed by the Legislative Yuan on Friday last week with a cash handout budget of NT$236 billion, was officially submitted to the Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon. People can register through the official Web site at https://10000.gov.tw to have the funds deposited into their bank accounts, withdraw the funds at automated teller
PEACE AND STABILITY: Maintaining the cross-strait ‘status quo’ has long been the government’s position, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan is committed to maintaining the cross-strait “status quo” and seeks no escalation of tensions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, rebutting a Time magazine opinion piece that described President William Lai (賴清德) as a “reckless leader.” The article, titled “The US Must Beware of Taiwan’s Reckless Leader,” was written by Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Defense Priorities think tank. Goldstein wrote that Taiwan is “the world’s most dangerous flashpoint” amid ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said that the situation in the Taiwan Strait has become less stable
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