Not surprisingly, Japanese tourists are cancelling trips to the mainland for fear they may be caught up in new anti-Japan protests. Already half of Japanese tours for next month have been cancelled as well as a third of those to Hong Kong. More cancellations can be expected if violent demonstrations continue.
According to the Asahi Shimbun, news of the demonstrations 'has sparked a tidal wave of trip cancellations by Japanese tourists and by schools that had planned group trips there'.
The timing could not have been worse because the travel industry 'counts on big profits during the long 'golden week' holidays' starting later this month, according to the Asahi Shimbun. All Nippon Airways, which operates 118 flights to nine cities in China every week, had received 1,300 cancellations by Saturday, before the latest demonstrations.
School trips, too, are being cancelled. Toogakuen High School in Aomori prefecture cancelled a six-day school trip to the mainland for 234 students, who will now tour Japan instead.
As for Hong Kong, it is true our demonstrations were free of violence. Our tour operators can say that protests here are peaceful and posed no danger to anyone, but to many Japanese tourists - and tour operators - that is too fine a distinction. If it is dangerous to travel to China, then of course travel to Hong Kong must also be dangerous.
This is a warning signal the economic ties between China and Japan, which have been nurtured for 25 years - to such an extent that China is now Japan's biggest trading partner - could be in jeopardy.
The demonstrations have now been going on for three weekends and have spread to more than a dozen cities. It is time to defuse the ticking bomb. For one thing, President Hu Jintao should accept Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's offer of a summit meeting later this week, when both men will be at a conference in Jakarta.