Chinese leaders may come to regret anti-Japan protests

China’s decision to open its streets to a wave of anti-Japan protests could end in a damaging backwash, with Beijing emerging from days of fervent nationalism with eroded authority at home and fewer options in dealing with Tokyo.

The mass protests, ignited by a renewed territorial dispute, contained some criticism of Beijing as being too soft on its traditional Asian rival, creating pressures that could help push China’s incoming new leadership deeper into a diplomatic corner.

China’s likely next president, Vice President Xi Jinping, emerged days ago from two unnerving weeks out of public view, when he was apparently ill. Now he and other leaders risk being seen as hiding from a widespread hunger for Beijing to be tougher against Tokyo and other regional rivals.

“We think that the government is too soft and we want to show what we think,” said Zhang Xin, one of the many thousands of protesters who converged on the Japanese embassy in Beijing over recent days to vent their rage.

He and tens of thousands of other patriotic demonstrators nation-wide have condemned Japan for buying a cluster of disputed islands in the East China Sea - an outpouring of patriotism that would have been both assuring and alarming to Chinese Communist Party leaders viewing videos and reports of the protests in their leafy, walled compound in central Beijing.

Assuring because the crowds so fervently embraced Beijing’s message that it had a rightful claim over the islands, which Tokyo calls the Senkaku and Beijing calls the Diaoyu. Alarming because so many protesters were prepared to say publicly that they did not think their country’s leaders had the strength to act on that claim.