A Tibetan protester is arrested during the torch relay in Canberra. (AP)

Canberra, April 24 (Reuters): More than 10,000 Chinese Australians staged the biggest pro-Beijing rally of the Olympic torch relay today and drowned out Tibetan demonstrators in a sea of red Chinese flags.

Protests and tight security have followed the torch around the world over the past month, putting China’s domestic and foreign policies under the spotlight before the Games in August.

Anti-Chinese protests during the previous relay legs have sparked a wave of patriotism amongst Chinese at home and abroad, and today thousands of Chinese chanting “One China” packed the start and finish of the relay in the Australian capital. Police made seven arrests, but for the most part the event was peaceful.

“This is a magnificent day for us today to show that Australia can have a peaceful rally. Watching overseas protests, I felt shamed that they can behave like that,” Wellington Lee, from the Chinese Association of Victoria state, told Reuters. Chinese six-deep lined the 16-km relay route and hundreds of cars drove around Canberra carrying Chinese flags.

“It was highly organised,” Free-Tibet supporter and Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown told Reuters. “Australians will feel a little bit uncomfortable by the fact that communist China came to town and just showed it can buy anything.”

China denied the charge. A 2006 census recorded 207,000 people in Australia who were born in China.

Unlike in London, Paris or San Francisco, where torch bearers were jostled by anti-Beijing protesters as they ran, in Canberra a heavy police presence, steel barricades and the city’s wide boulevards ensured runners were unobstructed.

Scuffles broke out between Tibetan protesters and China supporters, who included Australian Chinese and Chinese students in Australia, before the start of the relay and as a few Tibetan protesters tried to block the runners.

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