Chinese demonstrators decry gas deal with Japan

BEIJING, June 18 (Reuters) - A small crowd of Chinese protesters on Wednesday denounced a compromise with Japan over disputed undersea gas, saying the deal could betray national interests.

Close to 20 young and middle-aged men, watched over by dozens more police, gathered in front of the Japanese Embassy in Beijing to decry any compromise on the East China Sea gas dispute.

They also condemned Japan over a recent spat with Taiwan -- the self-ruled island claimed by Beijing -- over disputed islands known as the Senkaku isles in Japan, Diaoyu in Chinese and Tiaoyutai in Taiwan.

"You must get out of the Diaoyu islands at once and immediately leave the East China Sea," one protester, Zhang Likun, said into a megaphone. "The Chinese people won't let Japan steal any wealth from our East China Sea."

The two Asian powers, seeking to ease years of antagonism, much of it springing from Japan's brutal 1931-45 invasion and occupation of parts of China, announced at a May summit that they were close to resolving the dispute over gas in the East China Sea.

On Wednesday, China announced that the two countries had reached "principled consensus" on the issue.

But the protest was a closely controlled reminder of the gulf of public distrust between China and Japan that could hinder, or even derail, government efforts to ease strains.

The gas dispute centres on where the boundary between the two countries' exclusive maritime economic zones falls, and has come to embody the sometimes bitter rivalry over influence and sovereignty that has divided the two Asian economic giants.

Japan says the median line between the two countries' coasts marks the divide. China says the boundary is defined by its continental shelf, extending its zone towards Japan.