More than half of Chinese see war with Japan — Poll

More than half of Chinese people think their country could go to war with Japan in the future, a new poll revealed yesterday, after two years of intense diplomatic squabbles.

A survey conducted in both nations found that 53.4 per cent of Chinese envisage a future conflict, with more than a fifth of those saying it would happen ‘within a few years’, while 29 per cent of Japanese can see military confrontation.

The findings come ahead of the second anniversary Thursday of Japan’s nationalisation of disputed islands in the East China Sea that have formed the focus of tensions between the Asian giants.

Underlining the lingering row over the Tokyo- controlled Senkaku Islands, four Chinese coast guard vessels sailed into their territorial waters yesterday morning. China regards them as its territory and calls them the Diaoyu Islands.

The survey was conducted by Japanese non-governmental organisation Genron and the China Daily, a Chinese state-run newspaper, in July and August. It questioned 1,000 Japanese aged 18 or older and 1,539 Chinese of the same age range in five cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenyang and Xian.

In the annual opinion poll which started in 2005, 93.0 per cent of Japanese respondents said their impression of China was ‘unfavourable,’ worsening from 90.1 per cent last year and the highest level since the survey began.

The percentage of Chinese who have an unfavourable impression of Japan stood at 86.8 per cent, an improvement on 92.8 per cent last year.

“The most common reason for the unfavourable impression of China among the Japanese public was ‘China’s actions are incompatible with international rules’ at 55.1 per cent,” Genron and the China Daily said in a joint statement. — AFP