Chinese people call for advancing China-Japan ties
- By Cui Can
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 25, 2019
A recent opinion poll shows that more Chinese people are optimistic about the Sino-Japanese relations, and expect both sides to deepen economic cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.
The results were released on Thursday in Beijing before the 15th Beijing-Tokyo Forum that will be held from Oct. 26-27.
The poll, jointly conducted by China International Publishing Group (CIPG) and non-profit Japanese organization Genron NPO, received responses from 1,500 residents in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and other seven Chinese cities between September and October.
On Sino-Japanese ties, 45.9% of the Chinese respondents held a "favorable" or "relatively favorable" impression of Japan, 3.7 percentage points higher than the previous year. And more Chinese people believed the relationship between the two sides was improving, with 34.3% choosing "better," against 30.3% in 2018. This was the fourth consecutive year to see this improvement.
A notable increase was also found in people's optimism about the future of bilateral ties, such as economic trade and regional cooperation. A total of 60.8% of Chinese respondents believed China and Japan enjoy strong economic complementarity and 59.3% expected the trade volume between them to increase "significantly" or at least "moderately."
However, the poll also found less Chinese respondents believing people-to-people exchanges were becoming more active, with a drop of seven percentage points from 48.6% in 2018 to 41.6% this year. More than 70% of the respondents believed such exchange could play a key role in developing the bilateral ties.
In addition, 69.3% of the Chinese respondents expected the two countries to enhance cooperation in various areas such as economic fields and trade (28.4%), renewable energy (26.5%), and peace and order in Northeast Asia (23.4%).
Historical issues still loom over China-Japan relations, but the percentage of Chinese respondents feeling worried about the military threat from Japan dropped sharply. A total of 55.5% of Chinese respondents saw Japan as a military threat, down by 13.2 percentage points from last year.
Gao Anming, vice president of CIPG, released the poll results and gave explanations on the findings.
The Beijing-Tokyo Forum is the highest-level public diplomatic communication platform between China and Japan. It is expected to attract about 500 guests and representatives from the two countries to discuss topics including politics, diplomacy, economy and trade this year.
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