"No THAAD! Lotte out of China!" This is what was written on the banner held by a group of protesters in front of a Lotte-invested supermarket in the city of Qidong, East China's Jiangsu province, on Thursday.

Such protests were organized after the Republic of Korea conglomerate Lotte Group accepted a plot of land in exchange for its Skyhill Golf Course in Seongju where the US' Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system will be deployed, a move which China is strongly opposed to because it will destabilize the strategic balance in East Asia in favor of the United States.

Does this remind you of a similar protest last year? In July, after an arbitration tribunal passed a biased verdict in support of the Philippines and against China in a South China Sea dispute case, groups of angry people in North China's Hebei province blocked the doors to some KFC outlets shouting slogans such as "Foreign brand out of China!"