Chinese netizens maintain negative attitude to Japan: poll

The Chinese netizens' negative attitude toward Japan and its government has remained unchanged despite Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent trip to Beijing to attend the 22th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting. [Special coverage]

About 200,000 Chinese netizens responded a recent poll on the influence that Abe's Beijing visit has exerted on the China-Japan relations, which was jointly conducted by Xinhua International and www.qq.com.

When answering the question of "What attitude do you have toward Japan?", more than 170,000 respondents, or 83 percent of the total, chose the item of "Negative," while less than 3 percent checked the box of "positive," with 14 percent replying: "Do Not Care."

The results accords with those of a survey conducted by China Daily and Japanese non-profit think thank Genron NPO in September, which showed more than 86 percent of Chinese citizens "do not have a good impression of Japan," while 17 percent of them "have a good or not too bad impression."

Chinese netizens' negative attitude toward the Japanese government is mainly due to its inconsistency in words and deeds before and after the APEC meeting on Monday and Tuesday.

China and Japan reached a four-point agreement to improve bilateral ties when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, met on Nov. 7, agreeing to resume political, diplomatic and security dialogues while acknowledging different positions on the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.

But on Tuesday, only a few days later, Kishida at a press conference denied the fact that there exists territorial dispute over the Diaoyu Islands between China and Japan.

He also cited China's declaration in November 2013 of an air defense identification zone over the East China Sea as one arousing different views between the two Asian countries, saying that "tensions remain over issues like that."

On Thursday, Kishida told a session of the upper house committee on diplomacy and defense that the four-point agreement reached by China and Japan is "not legally binding," nor is "an international agreement."

On the reason why Kishida said Japan's stance on the Diaoyu Islands remains unchanged, more than half of the Chinese netizens said: "It was because of pragmatism of the Abe government."

Besides, three quarters of the Chinese netizens said that they "do not care about Abe's Beijing tour."

More than half of them said Abe's China visit has not exerted much influence on China-Japan relations, while nearly 40 percent said China-Japan relations depend on what Japan behaves.

On the China-Japan relationship in 2015, two thirds of the respondents predicted "It will become worse," and only less than 4 percent said that they "are optimistic about it," which shows that the Chinese netizens have a clear view on the current China-Japan relationship and are prepared for its possible trend of development in future.