2008-5-15 07:57
新加坡爱问
Chinese view Japan 'more positively'
<p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">Chinese urbanites are changing their attitudes toward Japan and many of them are viewing their Asian neighbor more positively, a recent survey has shown.</p><table align="left" border="0" bordercolordark="#ffffff" bordercolorlight="#ffffff" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="BORDER-RIGHT: #ffffff 0px; BORDER-TOP: #ffffff 0px; BORDER-LEFT: #ffffff 0px; WIDTH: 80px; BORDER-BOTTOM: #ffffff 0px; HEIGHT: 20px; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff"><tbody><tr><td align="left" style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" valign="center"><div align="left" style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><img align="center" border="0" id="817436" md5="" sourcedescription="编辑提供的本地文件" sourcename="本地文件" src="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-05/07/../../images/attachement/jpg/site1/20080507/0013729ece6b098b32cc4f.jpg" style="WIDTH: 268px; HEIGHT: 345px" title=""/><br/><font size="1" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Chinese residents in Japan welcome Chinese President Hu Jintao upon his arrival at Tokyo's Haneda airport May 6, 2008. [Agencies]</font> </div></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">The Beijing-based Horizon Research Consultancy Group last June polled 3,181 residents in the country's 10 largest cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">The perception of Japan by the city-dwellers improved dramatically last year, measuring 2.04 units out of a maximum 4 in the survey. The figure rose from scores of 1.84 in 2006 and 1.82 in 2005, the survey revealed on Sunday.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">The research group considered the frequent exchange visits of high-level officials, particularly those after former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe's "ice-breaking" trip in the autumn of 2006, as the cause for the dramatic improvement in perception.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">"Abe's 'ice-breaking' visit to China and Premier Wen Jiabao's 'ice-thawing' trip to Japan in the spring of 2007 warmed up Sino-Japanese ties frozen during Junichiro Koizumi's tenure as Japanese prime minister," the Horizon report stated.</p><p></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">Despite the sharp increase in the popularity of the Japanese among Chinese from 2006 to last year, it was "still relatively low in general", the report said.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">The survey also found that Chinese urbanites who thought that historical issues between the two countries should be shelved outnumbered those who insisted the issues should be resolved as a top priority.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">The reverse was true in surveys the research group conducted in 2005 and 2006.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">"It means that urban Chinese are contributing to a breakthrough of bilateral ties," the group reported.</p><p align="right" style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px"><img align="right" border="0" id="817439" md5="" sourcedescription="编辑提供的本地文件" sourcename="本地文件" src="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-05/07/../../images/attachement/jpg/site1/20080507/0013729ece6b098b32434e.jpg" style="WIDTH: 402px; HEIGHT: 450px" title=""/></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">"History is a wall dividing China and Japan, but that is not the entire story, especially when the two countries are increasingly interconnected with each other," it added.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">Still, the changing image of Japan among Chinese did not extend to Chinese urbanites' view that bilateral ties were seen in a "hot in economics, cold in politics" way.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">More than 70 percent of those polled thought that Japan did not accord China enough respect, while 44.1 percent still considered the neighbor a threat to China's national interests.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">At the same time, close to a quarter of those surveyed considered Japan as the most important country for the Chinese economy after the United States.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">"Political frictions, such as those over the Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula issues, are inevitable between China and Japan, with both being East Asian powerhouses," the group reported.</p><p style="MARGIN: 0px 3px 15px">"Friction from national interests and potential strategic conflicts make the pair often 'cold' in political relations," it said.</p></div>