Many thanks to China Confidential and Riding Sun for expanding on stories heard over the weekend of riots in and around Huankantou Village, eastern China. The protests against pollution from nearby factories were suppressed by police, and there were two fatalities among the crowd. The environmental degradation caused by China's "economic miracle" is cast as a pivotal political issue by the Chinese deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration in our recent interview, China's Environmental Suicide.

Meanwhile in Bejing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen other protests, this time against Japanese targets and apparently motivated by a move from Japan to rewrite its history textbooks to downplay the brutal occupation of China by the Japanese in the decades leading up to the end of the second world war, were seen to be actively encouraged by the Chinese administration.