Slight rise in mutual impressions despite disputes
A growing number of Chinese and Japanese people hold a positive impression of each other due to more mutual contact, despite the existence of disputes over territory and history, a recent joint poll by a Chinese and a Japanese organization found.
According to the results of the poll released by China International Publishing Group (CIPG) and Japanese non-profit organization the Genron NPO on Thursday, some 78 percent of Chinese respondents said their impression of Japan is "bad" while 89 percent of Japanese respondents felt the same about China. The two figures from last year's poll stood at 87 percent and 93 percent, respectively.
The poll was conducted from August to September and surveyed 1,970 respondents in 10 Chinese cities and 1,627 respondents in Japan.
A preliminary conclusion can be drawn from the survey that impressions will definitely be improved with increased exchanges, Yasushi Kudo, president of the Genron NPO, told the Global Times.
China is the largest source of foreign visitors to Japan, with over 2 million visitors in the first half of 2015, twice the amount seen in the same period in 2014, the Kyodo News Agency reported on July 22. Kudo said this increase means that more and more Chinese people can truly come to know what Japan is like through their visits.
Some 70 percent of Chinese respondents and 74 percent of Japanese respondents regard Sino-Japanese relations as "important," and this is the first time since 2010 that Chinese respondents have shown increasing recognition of this question.
However, both groups agreed that territorial disputes are the biggest obstacle hindering the progress of China-Japan relations.
About 60 percent of Chinese respondents believed that there are no grounds for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to visit the notorious war-linked Yasukuni Shrine.
The survey also found that the primary reason for Chinese respondents' negative impressions of Japan is Japan's lack of sincere apology for and introspection about the country's history of invading China. Conversely, over half of Japanese respondents ascribed their negative views of China to the country's criticism of Japan over historical issues.
While Chinese attention to history generally remained stable over the past decade, Abe's statement marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II has put a new spotlight on such issues, Wang Gangyi, vice president of CIPG, told the Global Times.
About 74 percent of those surveyed in China said they are dissatisfied with Abe's statement, which Kudo said threw cold water on relations just when people from both countries were starting to feel better about each other. When asked about the first thing that comes to mind about Japan, Chinese respondents' top two answers were the Diaoyu Islands and the Nanking Massacre, while the top two responses from Japanese were air pollution and Chinese cuisine.
