金融时报：据调查，中国大部分人预料将与日本开战

2014年9月10日
中国大部分人预料将与日本开战（Majority in China expect war with Japan）
记者：Sevastopulo，香港

金融时报易用的资料来自2014年9月9日发布的“Analysis Report on the Comparative Data”，由中日间两个新闻机构共同调查。相比而言，在日本，觉得两国要开战的不到三成，不过绝大部分人对中国有敌意。日本政府有点像美国的两党，被极端派左右。

同样一份调查，不同的人，不同的观点。华尔街日报用这个标题：（记者Megumi Fujikawa）Japanese People Hate China More Than Ever。呵呵。

（金融时报一般不希望他人复制其报道，本来不应当，但读起来不方便，所以把原文附上。）
 

China and Japan are heading towards military conflict, according to a majority of Chinese surveyed on ties between the Asian powers in a Sino-Japanese poll.

The Genron/China Daily survey found that 53 per cent of Chinese respondents – and 29 per cent of the Japanese polled – expect their nations to go to war. The poll was released ahead of the second anniversary of Japan’s move to nationalise some of the contested Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

Relations between Japan and China have soured since Japan bought three of the tiny islands – which China claims and calls the Diaoyu – in 2012. Japan defended the move as an effort to thwart a plan by the anti-China governor of Tokyo to buy them, but China accused it of breaching an unwritten deal to keep the status quo.

According to the poll, 38 per cent of Japanese think war will be avoided, but that marked a nine point drop from 2013. It also found that a record 93 per cent of Japanese have an unfavourable view of their Chinese neighbours, while the number of Chinese who view Japanese unfavourably fell 6 points to 87 per cent.

Jeff Kingston, a Japan expert at Temple University in Philadelphia, said Japanese tabloid media were driving the already negative sentiment towards China by focusing on its “warmongering”. He added that the government was “amplifying the anxiety” by talking about the threat from China.

Sino-Japanese relations started to improve about a year ago, spurring Tokyo to start laying the groundwork for a possible first meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But ties deteriorated rapidly again after Mr Abe’s visit in December to Yasukuni, a controversial shrine dedicated to Japan’s war dead including a handful of convicted war criminals.

Mr Abe wants to hold a summit with Mr Xi in November on the sidelines of an Apec summit in Beijing but China has shown no sign of interest. Critics say Mr Abe has hurt efforts to repair ties by visiting Yasukuni and also because of the perception that he is an unrepentant ultranationalist.

This week two members of Mr Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic party, including a new cabinet minister, were forced to distance themselves from photographs that showed them posing with the leader of a Japanese neo-Nazi party.

“He just replaced the rightwing loonies [in his cabinet] with another group of rightwing loonies,” said Mr Kingston.

Since Japan bought the uninhabited Senkaku islets from their private Japanese owners, Chinese ships and aircraft have made routine incursions into what Japan claims are its sovereign waters and airspace.

In November last year China also created an aerial defence identification zone – an area that serves as an early warning system of incursions into its airspace, which can result in the scrambling of fighter jets – over the East China Sea in a move that experts said greatly raised the chance of conflict. This year, Mr Abe accused China of flying fighter jets “dangerously” close to Japanese aircraft. The US recently warned China about similar actions.

In dept: Asia maritime tensions

Latest news and comment on the escalating disputes over islands and territorial waters between an increasingly assertive China and its neighbours.

Kyodo said four Chinese coast guard ships entered Japanese waters around the Senkaku on Wednesday, in the 22nd such intrusion this year. However, the pace of incursions has declined from last year, when Chinese vessels sailed in the waters on 54 occasions, according to data from the Japanese coast guard.

Some experts have suggested that China has reduced maritime patrols around the Senkaku as its coast guard and navy focus on the South China Sea, where Beijing is involved in a series of maritime disputes with its neighbours, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam. In the poll, the biggest reason for Japan’s unfavourable view of China was the belief that Beijing’s actions were “incompatible with international rules”.

According to the poll, which has been conducted annually since the last trough in Sino-Japanese relations in 2005, Chinese and Japanese respondents both said the biggest hurdle to relations was territorial disputes, although the number voicing that view declined more than 10 points from 2012.