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Survey: Thorny issues remain in Sino-Japan relations

By Qi Xiao (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-08-26 11:03

Although views of Sino-Japanese relations have improved over the last year, contentious issues remain between the two countries, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

The survey, jointly sponsored by the China Daily and Genron NPO, a Japanese think tank similar to the American Council on Foreign Relations, asked 1,589 ordinary people from China's five major cities and 1,008 university students in China about a number of issues concerning China and Japan relations.

Nearly 51 percent of the students described current relations between Japan and China either as "good" or "very good", an increase of 8.5 compared with last year's survey, while 71% of the ordinary people think so, an increase of 17 percent.

However, optimism about the future of Sino-Japanese relations is down from last year. 51.2 percent of ordinary people and 56.5 percent of the students say they are "optimistic" or "relatively optimistic" about the future of bilateral relations, decreases of 29.8 percent and 8.4 percent respectively.

According to the survey, unresolved historical issues and territorial disputes between China and Japan have prevented further development of China-Japan relations.

"Japan's refusal to apologize on historical issues", "Japanese leaders' visits to Yasukuni Shrine" (a cemetery holding Japanese casualties of war, including 14 war criminals), "Japanese aggression in China" and the perceived "Japanese military threat to China" were among the top factors contributing to an unfavorable image of Japan in China, the survey found.

When asked about "the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Japan", over half of the Chinese respondents choose "Nanjing Massacre," and that percentage has increased over the past three surveys.

Although an overwhelming majority of the respondents attach great importance to governmental and nongovernmental exchanges to improve bilateral relations, 52.2 percent of the ordinary people in China surveyed say they do not want to visit Japan. Just under half of those reluctant to visit say language barriers are the main reason they don't want to go.

The survey also found that the Chinese public does not know much about Japanese politicians. While the controversial Junichiro Koizumi，who served as Japan's Prime Minister between 2001 and 2006, had a 64.4 percent recognition rate, only 31.6 percent of the resident respondents know Taro Aso, the current Prime Minister, while less than 20 percent know about Shinzo Abe, Koizumi's successor.

"Direct people-to-people exchanges are few and far between," Kudo Yasushi, the head of Genron NPO, said at the press conference announcing the release of the survey. "Only 1 to 2 percent of the Chinese respondents have ever been to Japan or have any Japanese friends. The same can also be said of Japanese."

"When the majority of Chinese or Japanese have never been to Japan or China and have never had any direct talk or contact with each other, how can they know what the others are thinking about and how can they better understand each other?" he added.

The Sino-Japan Joint Opinion Poll, launched in 2005 and conducted each year, aims to facilitate communication and understanding between the two countries, and is affiliated with the Beijing-Tokyo Forum, an annual meeting of political and NGO leaders from China and Japan.