Chinese basketball star Yi Jianlian has issued an online call for a freeze on the vandalism amid protests over Japan's "purchase" of China's Diaoyu Islands.

"The property damaged in the looting all belongs to our compatriots. Please stop the recklessness which is hurting our own people!" he wrote on his Sina Weibo on Saturday.

Since the Japanese government reached a deal on the purchase of the Diaoyu Islands with the Kurihara family whom it called "the private owner" on September 11, waves of protests have broken out in many parts of China, where irrational patriots damaged everything Japanese-related, from cars to restaurants, seriously disturbing the social order.

China called for people to express their demands in a "legal and rational way". It also announced on Sunday it will submit a partial submission concerning the outer limits of the continental shelf to the United Nations in its latest move to defend its maritime sovereignty.