The French retailer is the latest target of Chinese anger at pro-Tibet protesters who have tried to disrupt the torch relay.

Rumours on Chinese Web sites accused Carrefour of supporting the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, but the company denied that.

In Beijing, police detained seven men and two women outside a Carrefour in the Haidian university district.

One man was stopped as he ran around with a sign that said 'Protest Carrefour, Protest CNN' as about 200 bystanders cheered.

Two women and two men who were detained wore T-shirts that said 'Anti-Riot and Explore the Truth' in English, a reference to deadly anti-Chinese riots in Tibet in March.

CNN has been a focus of criticism by Chinese who say foreign news reports on Tibet are biased.

Protesters carried banners and chanted slogans at Carrefour stores in Changsha in central China, Fuzhou in the southeast, Chongqing in the southwest and Shenyang in the northeast, the government's Xinhua News Agency reported.

Several hundred people protested in Changsha, Xinhua said. It did not say how large the other demonstrations were.

In Changsha, protesters held banners saying, 'Support Olympics', 'Oppose Tibet Independence', 'Love China' and 'Unity is Power', according to Xinhua.

It said passers-by signed their names on the banners and joined in chanting slogans.

Phone calls to Carrefour spokespeople in China were not answered.

The protests occurred despite Chinese government efforts to discourage them. Calls for boycotts of foreign companies have been deleted from Web sites.

A top figure in the ruling Communist Party, Jia Qinglin, called Wednesday for Chinese to channel their 'patriotic passion' into holding a successful Beijing Olympics in August.

The party newspaper People's Daily ran an editorial Wednesday with the headline 'We Smile to the World'.

The Tibet protests were a propaganda disaster for Beijing, which wants the Olympics to showcase China as a stable, prosperous society.

Chinese nationalists are angry at protests that dogged the Olympic relay abroad, especially in Paris, where a protester tried to grab the torch from a Chinese athlete in a wheelchair.

They called for protests at Carrefour on Thursday, when many Chinese employees got a day off for the international Labor Day.

Carrefour SA, based in Paris, is China's biggest retailer, with 112 outlets in areas throughout the country.

In Shanghai, three university students stood outside a Carrefour handing out stickers that said 'My Chinese heart' but said they were not protesting.

'We just want to show our support for China. We are not protesting anything,' said one student, Mr Michael Chen. Police took the students' names but did not detain them.

At a Carrefour on Beijing's east side, there was no sign of protests Thursday and the store was packed with shoppers taking advantage of a holiday sale.

One shopper said she went to the store to see whether there would be protests and stayed to shop.

'I heard about it, but didn't think it would happen. And since I was here I figured I would pick up some things,' said the woman, who would give only her surname, Liu.

Carrefour outlets in a dozen Chinese cities were the target of earlier protests, with scuffles erupting between Chinese and foreigners.

The Chinese and French governments have tried to heal their diplomatic rift over the Paris protests.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy sent a letter to the Chinese athlete saying the attempt to grab the torch did not reflect the feelings of the French people.

Carrefour expressed support this week for the Beijing Olympics.

'The attack on the torch and athletes violated the Olympic spirit and harmed the feelings of Chinese people and we feel regret and anger about this,' Mr Jean Luc Lhuillier, the company's China vice president, said Monday, according to a company statement.

'As a big enterprise, Carrefour doesn't want to play any role in politics; we just want to do our business,' he said. -- AP