Tourism helps ties, but it's uneven

BEIJING - Tourism, a crucial but unofficial way for Chinese and Japanese to know more about each other, needs improving to strengthen bilateral ties during the post-earthquake era, according to the annual Japan-China Joint Opinion Survey over seven years.

The surveys show a steady increase in people who are willing to visit the other country, this year reaching 75.8 percent of Chinese and 78.4 percent of Japanese. But politics and disasters have set up obstacles to their actually making the trip.

* In September 2010, a Chinese trawler and Japanese coast guard patrol vessels collided near the Diaoyu Islands. The next month, the number of Chinese visitors to Japan dropped from 138,000 to 106,000 after nine months of increases, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.