Spotlight: Eliminating negative national sentiment helps improve Japan's ties with China, S.Korea

After a three-year hiatus, the trilateral meeting mechanism between leaders of China, South Korea and Japan will resume, a sign of detente in the tense relations between Japan and its two Asian neighbors.

With the attendance of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the sixth trilateral meeting, which will be held from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 in Seoul, is expected to help dispel negative national public sentiment.

TENSE RELATIONS

National sentiment in South Korea and China toward Japan has been deteriorating over the past few years. So has Japan's toward them.

An opinion poll on China-Japan relations in 2015, published last Friday by China International Publishing Group and the Genron NPO of Japan, showed that 78.3 percent of Chinese respondents view Japan as "unfavorable," while 88.8 percent of Japanese have the same attitude toward China.

Behind the negative impressions are historical and territorial disputes between Japan and its two neighbors, experts from the three countries have unanimously pointed out.

Japan's unapologetic attitude toward its war crimes committed in World War II annoys the peoples of victimized South Korea and China. Chinese people's perception of Japan has worsened since 2012, when Tokyo took the unilateral move of the so-called "purchase" of China's Diaoyu Islands.

"Abe has played a hot and cold diplomatic game, which revolves around his military ambitions, and this is on top of an ongoing territorial dispute and differing ideas about wartime history," Kaoru Imori, senior research fellow at the Department of Political Science in Tokyo-based Meiji Gakuin University, told Xinhua.

Among those who maintain "unfavorable" views of Japan, most Chinese poll takers were concerned about the rising militarism in Japan, which is evident under Abe's premiership.

"The Japanese government, especially the right wing, has twisted history and misled the people by covering up and distorting facts, from which our Chinese people developed a serious dislike for them," said Yang Xiyu, a senior researcher with the China Institute of International Studies, a Beijing-based think tank.

The poll shows that 70.5 percent of Chinese respondents view Japan as "unfavorable" mainly because the Abe administration has not issued a sincere apology for the atrocities Japan committed during World War II.

"In turn, in the view of many ordinary Japanese people, Chinese and South Koreans have always dwelt on historical issues," Yang told Xinhua in an interview.

The poll's result confirms Yang's analysis, as 55.1 percent of Japanese people have developed a negative impression of China for "China always criticizing Japan on historical issues."

"It is pretty certain that a small group of extreme right-wing politicians, not the whole Japanese nation, have kept revisionist historical viewpoints, and the twisted viewpoints have negatively affected the bilateral relationship," said Kim Han-know, assistant professor at the Department of Asian and Pacific Studies at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy.

MORE EXCHANGES NEEDED

As any country takes the will of its people into consideration when mapping out its domestic and foreign policies, it is urgently needed to improve the mutual impression between Japanese people and Chinese people in order to ultimately improve bilateral ties.

In turn, sound political relations between China and Japan will help ease the negative national sentiment prevailing in the public, which has hit a record low, according to Ruan Zongze, vice president of the China Institute of International Studies.

"Improving relations between Japanese people and Chinese people is vitally important for the region as a whole, for reasons of trade and commerce, as well as culture and human bonds," Imori told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, Ruan said the current impasse between China and Japan has extended beyond the political range to economic areas.

"Diplomatic ties need to not only thaw, but markedly improve; when a population or populations see their leaders forging better ties, it encourages ties on all levels, including the social level, to improve," Imori said.

On how to change the national sentiment from negative to positive, Imori said "all of these issues need to be addressed by Abe, if this can happen honestly and with no ulterior motives, there is no reason why Japan and its neighbors cannot rekindle the kind of friendships they enjoyed in the past."

"Also, domestically, the government could perhaps do more to tackle hate speeches and literature that carry overtly anti-Korean or anti-Chinese sentiment and focus more on restoring productive human relations, boosting cultural, educational and business exchanges, which will benefit all parties humanistically and economically," he said.

"We should contain political troubles and try to understand international relations among the three countries from a multi-dimensional perspective," Kim told Xinhua.

"Besides official exchanges that are crucial to state-to-state relations, the two sides should give non-governmental exchanges full play in improving governmental ties as they did before the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1972," Ruan said.

For China, it is also important to address key issues such as the Diaoyu Islands in a way that is easily understandable to the Japanese people, said Liu Jiangyong, vice director of the Institute of Contemporary International Relations at Tsinghua University, highlighting the importance of communication between the two peoples and states.

FRESH OPPORTUNITY TO EASE TIES

The upcoming three-way leaders' meeting can be a good opportunity to thaw the icy relations between Japan and its neighbors, so as to proceed with their cooperative and development agenda for Northeast Asia.

"Trilateral cooperation on such topics as conventional security issues and non-conventional security issues like climate change, environmental issues, nuclear safety and anti-terrorism would lead to, or at least be conducive to, turning negative perceptions of others into favorable ones," Kim said.

"The meeting shows a detente in China-Japan relations, or a small step toward a lower level of their tensions, and signals a positive trend after two meetings between the Chinese and Japanese leaders last year and early this year," Ruan told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"The meeting will help reverse the two peoples' perception of the other, improve Chinese people's understanding of their Japanese counterparts, and correct the latter's wrong perception of China-Japan ties," Yang said.

"Premier Li will state China's position on matters of principle, such as historical issues, and the Japanese side will pay considerable attention to China's stance at the first meeting in more than three years," he said. "Thus this meeting helps create a good atmosphere for future communication, and brings more opportunities."

"However, changing the countries' impression of each other will not get instant results as the negative national sentiment is an accumulated consequence," Ruan said, adding that "if political ties defuse tensions, non-governmental relations will also be influenced positively."

Imori agreed that such changes would not take place overnight, saying "improving relations between Japanese people and Chinese people may take time." Enditem

Xinhua reporters Zhang Bihong and Ye Shan in Beijing, Zhang Qing in Seoul and Liu Tian in Tokyo contributed to the sto