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Prejudices make most Japanese wary of China

By Gao Hong (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-01 07:41

The annual survey of Chinese and Japanese media jointly conducted by Oriental Outlook, a weekly news magazine published by Xinhua News Agency, and Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper was published recently. Based on several thousand questionnaires in both countries, the survey results provide a perfect opportunity for us to gauge the psychological difference between the two peoples and feel their popular sentiments.

The survey figures show there is still a gap between the two peoples in terms of mutual understanding and recognition, indicating it remains a daunting long-term task for the two nations to promote mutual understanding and acceptance at the grassroots level.

Generally speaking, an unprecedented 67 percent of Chinese citizens rated Sino-Japanese ties as "good" while 29 percent believed otherwise (not good); in comparison, only 36 percent of Japanese public agreed with "good" and 57 percent chose "not good". Of course, compared with the 27 percent positive rating in 2006, when former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited China, the latest survey results tell us the Japanese people's confidence in our bilateral ties has recovered a bit.

This author believes that the Chinese public identifies with their government's political value and foreign policies more than the Japanese do with theirs. Therefore the thawing relations between the two governments immediately led to the relatively optimistic assessment of bilateral ties by the Chinese people.

Quite different from the Chinese story, the Japanese people have always shown "a tendency to stay away from politics" with a lot of them decidedly feeling "politically cold" toward or "suspicious" about the government's foreign policies.

Mainstream media entities that influence public opinions in Japan are always mindful of their circulation or viewer ratings, hence their obsession with exclusive scoops and manipulative use of negative details in "China-related incidents". For instance, the "poisonous dumplings" and "clashes during the Olympic torch relay" not long ago strongly affected the Japanese public's view of China thanks to rumor-mongering, hyping and even slanderous story-telling by the Japanese media.

The survey results also show that, in the eye of the Japanese public, China comes across mainly as beefing up military might (57.4 percent), revitalizing traditional culture (21.7 percent) and protecting natural environment (2.8 percent); while in fact 72.9 percent of the Chinese polled support the revitalization of the nation's cultural tradition and 42.6 percent of them approve the government's efforts to protect the natural environment. This fully illustrates how under- and ill-informed the average Japanese is when it comes to China.

Why is it that the Japanese people are somewhat pessimistic when the Sino-Japanese relations are improving? This may have something to do with the historical link between the two nations and Japan's status in the region (East Asia) and the role it plays. And this author sums it up as "history complex" and "leadership complex".

Objectively speaking, most of the Japanese people think highly of the positive effect on the Japanese nation's development by the ancient Sino-Japanese ties and respect Sinology and the Chinese history, culture and tradition as intellectual treasures. But they have failed to fully understand or even tried hard to ignore the tragic chapter in modern history and view China's demand that Japan "correctly recognize history" as "playing the history card" in order to press Japan into submission.

Moreover, the Japanese public misses dearly the country's leading position in post-war Asia and "head of the pack" status in East Asian regional development. Despite the fact that even conservative former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi admitted at the 2002 Boao Forum that "China's development is a good opportunity rather than a challenge to Japanese economy," it has proved just a little too hard for the Japanese to see their nation being replaced as "leader of the pack".

In the survey results the trend mentioned above is shown as 38 percent of Japanese respondents believed that China's economic development has a negative effect on Japan, and only about 23 percent of them viewed China's economic development in a positive light. This not only is quite some way from the Japanese government's official stance but also indicates the number of people accepting China's economic development as a positive force has been shrinking by five percentage points a year on average, while the number of Japanese citizens believing the opposite has been growing by 2 percentage points annually.

There is obvious difference between the two peoples on the order of the first four of the multiple-choice questions about whether China and Japan should strengthen the areas of cooperation.

The Chinese respondents' preferences are economy (56 percent), science and technology (55 percent), politics and diplomacy (48 percent) and cooperation in exploring energy and other resources (38 percent) in that order. The Japanese respondents picked environmental issues (58 percent), politics and diplomacy (50 percent), cooperation in exploring energy and other resources (45 percent) and maintaining security (37 percent).

This shows the Chinese public expects a lot from Japan in the area of science and technology while the Japanese want more security guarantee from China.

The essence of today's Sino-Japanese relations has become increasing efforts to overcome obstacles and working toward inter-nation reconciliation after the signing of "the fourth political document" between China and Japan during Chinese President Hu Jintao's Japan visit in May.

Inter-nation reconciliation constitutes a standard higher than normalization of diplomatic ties, the signing of the China-Japan Peace and Friendship Treaty and "political partnership". Because the ultimate reconciliation between two major powers can only and must be that between the two peoples, mutual confidence between governments tends to become empty talk in a show of diplomatic skills if the two peoples remain hostile toward each other. In the era of fast democratization throughout the world, no politician can push through a foreign policy that, in fundamental intent, runs counter to popular desire.

Regarding their view of the China-Japan relationship from now on, 75 percent of the Chinese respondents believed it "would become better" while only 38 percent of their Japanese counterparts agreed. This indicates the bilateral relations are developing, but more efforts are needed to enhance mutual understanding and identification between the two peoples.

The Sino-Japanese relationship needs to advance and develop. The beautiful future drawn up by the two countries' top leaders through bilateral talks will depend on the peoples to realize, and the two East Asian nations will have a far-reaching impact on their region and even the world when they truly reconcile.

The author is a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

(China Daily 09/01/2008 page4)