Japanese people who said they felt negative toward China accounted for 89.7%, an increase of 5 percentage points from last year, in a joint public opinion poll conducted by organizations in Japan and China.
This was the first deterioration in Japanese respondents' impressions of China in four years.
The annual poll, conducted for the 16th time by Tokyo-based nonprofit organization The Genron NPO and the China International Publishing Group in an effort to know how Japanese and Chinese feel about each other, was released on Tuesday.
Asked why they felt negative or relatively negative about China, 57.4% of Japanese respondents cited Chinese government vessels' intrusions into Japanese territorial waters and airspace around the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture. The result, up 6 percentage points from last year, highlighted the fact that China's unilateral maritime activities have worsened Japanese people's feelings toward China.
Those who responded that Japan-China relations are important or relatively important was 64.2%, down 8.5 percentage points from last year, falling below 70% for the first time since the poll began in 2005.
On the Chinese side, 52.9% of respondents said they have a negative or relatively negative impression of Japan, remaining at relatively the same level as the previous year, while 74.7%, an increase of 7.7 percentage points from last year, said Japan-China relations were important or relatively important.
Chinese respondents who felt the United States poses a military threat to China was 84.1%, marking an increase of almost 10 percentage points from last year.
The intensification of the conflict between China and the United States may be behind Chinese people placing increasing importance on the Japan-China relationship.
The poll was conducted from September to October among people ages 18 and over. In Japan, 1,000 people nationwide responded, while in China, 1,571 people from 10 cities including Beijing and Shanghai responded.
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