Nearly 90 Pct in Japan, China Have Negative Views of Other

Tokyo, Dec. 2 (Jiji Press)--Close to 90 pct of people in both Japan and China have unfavorable impressions of each other's countries, a joint opinion poll by Japan's Genron NPO and China International Communications Group showed Monday.

The proportion of Japanese respondents who said they had a negative view of China stood at 89.0 pct, down 3.2 percentage points from a year before. The share of Chinese respondents with a negative view of Japan rose 24.8 points to 87.7 pct, the highest since 2013, the year after Tokyo nationalized the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

Respondents in both countries gave as the reasons for their views issues linked to the Senkaku chain and Taiwan, as well as the detention of Japanese nationals in China over espionage allegations.

The proportion of Chinese people who said Japan-China relations were not important jumped 40.5 points to 59.6 pct, while the share of people who view the ties as important shrank 33.8 points to 26.3 pct.

Social media platforms such as Weibo and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which tend to host radical anti-Japanese rhetoric, ranked high among respondents' sources of information about Japan. People's sentiment toward Japan is believed to be impacted by their use of such sites, as well as whether they have visited Japan.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]