Recent anti-Japanese street demonstrations in China may signal the start of economic decline for a nation that won its reputation as the “world’s manufacturing factory” in the late 1990s and surpassed Japan in 2010 to become the second-largest economy after the United States.

Although the riots were ostensibly meant as a protest against the Japanese government‘s purchase of three Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are also claimed by Beijing, a more fundamental undercurrent behind the violence was China’s growing economic woes, including the widening rich-poor gap, declining international competitiveness because of rising labor and other costs, and lagging efforts by local industries to move up the value chain.

Read Here – Japan Times