Kawashima True

So far, the Japanese and China -China public opinion surveys have been implemented by the Japanese remarks NPO (private think tank) and the China State Council's news office. The results of this year have been released.The results show that China has a somewhat improvement in Japan's favorability. However, Japan's favorability is still at a very low level, highlighting the difficulty of Japan -China relations.Because of the movement of public opinion, the decision -making of the government.

However, this year's public opinion survey has several focus worthy of attention.First, even if the feelings of each other are not good, the indicators that attach importance to bilateral relations are restored. Although 80 % of Japanese citizens are not close to China, 70 % think that Japan -China relations are important.Of course, the reason is the economy.

This indicator basically returned to the condition before the crown disease epidemic.Although both Japanese and Chinese parties are conceived the development of the epidemic, it is worth noting that the popularity of China hopes to travel to Japan has decreased significantly compared with the past and has not improved.This shows that the Chinese have not reached the stage of going abroad.

Second, Japan -China believes that East Asia, especially the security environment around Taiwan, is deteriorating. It is particularly believed that the Taiwan Strait crisis is increasing. I hope that East Asia is peaceful to prevent the majority of opinions from unexpected situations.However, the understanding of the subject of tension is completely different. China believes that the United States or Japan and the United States have created tensions, while Japan believes that China is the root cause of the creation of tension.In this sense, even if the tension is reduced, the reason is that the reason lies in the other party, so it will be required to restrain the other party.But regardless of the result, both sides are seeking "peace".

Third, whether it is the United Nations that play an important role in maintaining "peace", there are great differences in the opinions of Japanese and China.

In short, 53%of China affirmed the functions of the United Nations in terms of maintaining world peace, and 67%of the Japanese side held negative opinions, and the opinions were only 6.5%.Regarding the Ukrainian issue, 40 % of China believes that Russia's actions originated from the eastward expansion of NATO and believes that Russia is not wrong.In contrast, 73%of Japanese believe that Russia's actions violate the UN Charter and International Law and should oppose it.However, 22%of people in China believe that Russia should be opposed. 29%of people think that although Russia is wrong, it should also consider Russia's national conditions.On the Ukrainian issue, Chinese public opinion was torn.

Fourth, China believes that Japan's unfriendly reason for China is that Japanese media publicize the theory of Chinese threats, and more than 34%of the respondents, a significant increase from the last 12%.What is more interesting is that the Chinese people have a very high "trust" of the media. 80%believe that their media are objective and fair, and 83%believe that online public opinion reflects public opinion properly.This is also why most people think that the theory of the Chinese media is "official", and the "public opinion" on the Internet, that is, most of the statement, is tolerated by the Chinese government or the government, and is considered "correct".

On the other hand, China also believes that the reports of Japanese media are basically the same as government ideas, and also believe that the Japanese people believe that media reports are correct and influenced by the media.

However, as mentioned above, although the results of the investigation in 2022 also inherited the previous tendency, there were new trends.China's domestic views on the international situation are full of nervousness, which will have to be observed how it will have on the impact of China's foreign policies.

The author is a professor at the University of Tokyo