BEIJING: From his cramped studio apartment littered with dirty socks, old Pepsi bottles and instant noodles, Lu Yunfei has whipped up a wave of anti-Japan sentiment across China using little more than a laptop and a high-speed connection. Since February, the 30-year-old founder of the Patriots’ Alliance Website and his colleagues have collected 3.5 million signatures for a petition to block Tokyo’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. They also object to Japan’s approval of a school textbook that glosses over the nation’s wartime occupation of China and other countries in East Asia.

The effort has emboldened protesters, who have helped bring Sino-Japanese ties to their lowest point since the two nations normalized relations in 1972. “We’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished,” Lu said. “Japan is a pirate country, and the Chinese as their victims feel insulted and worried.” China’s ruling Communist Party, backed by a sophisticated Internet filtering system, an army of cyber-cops, a vigilant public security apparatus and an extensive informant network, is quick to shut down the slightest hint of a political movement.

Yet it has allowed Patriots’ Alliance and other anti-Japan groups to galvanize the nation, leading to an outpouring of rage that has brought tens of thousands of Chinese into the streets and has prompted attacks on Japanese companies, embassies and consulates.

Behind Beijing’s apparent acquiescence was a belief that it could harness public protests to serve its own aims, analysts say. But some China experts warn that party leaders are taking a risk: public resentment, once unleashed, can be difficult to contain.

“Once you mount the tiger, it’s hard to dismount,” said Nicholas Becquelin, Hong Kong-based research director with Human Rights in China. “They made use of the nationalism but found it a little more difficult to contain than they expected once its usefulness was over.”

A meeting between President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Saturday failed to produce a breakthrough in the month-long tensions as Hu called on Japan to back up its words of remorse with action.

But China is clamping down hard on potential demonstrators, blanketing likely protest sites with a large police presence and using media controls and its security machine to quell unrest. Controversies over history and textbooks are nothing new in East Asia.

Analysts say the larger issue is a battle between two powers for regional influence. China, one of five nations with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, has a significant interest in blocking Japan’s bid. Some say the public outcry has put Tokyo on the defensive and elicited sympathy from Southeast Asian nations occupied by Japan during World War II.

In China, the Communist Party may view the anti-Japan protests as a way to bolster its legitimacy. By fanning nationalism, analysts say, it hopes to spotlight to an angry population its role as a defender of China’s interests. “No leader wants to be seen as weak on sovereignty issues, especially those involving Japan,” said Phillip Saunders, senior fellow at the National Defense University in Washington.

The party may have seen a benefit in allowing people to vent their anger against the Japanese, rather than at local corruption, China’s yawning rich-poor gap, land grabs by party cadres, and mounting crime.

Such tactics can be dangerous for the government, calling into question whether authorities can shut off the tap once people get a taste of empowerment. In one recent case, workers in a Japanese-run factory reportedly joined a protest, then asked for an independent labor union, which Beijing forbids. “When Chinese start to feel such emotion, there’s a fear this could backfire against the government itself and get out of control,” said Zhu Feng, a regional security expert with Peking University. “The government is scared of these long-simmering sentiments.”

As anger flared in China, the Japanese government sent Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura on a fence-mending trip to Beijing, looking for an apology and compensation for the damage its embassy and businessmen suffered. After Machimura returned to Tokyo empty-handed, Japan requested the Hu-Koizumi meeting. Although the request that China pay for the damage caused by protesters may seem reasonable in Tokyo, demonstrators in Beijing and Shanghai hold different views.—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service