Chinese and Japanese people view each other slightly more positively than last year, according to a survey released on Wednesday at a press conference in Beijing.

The survey is jointly sponsored by China Daily and Genron NPO, a Japanese think tank similar to the American Council on Foreign Relations. It also found overwhelming agreement in both countries that Sino-Japanese relations were important.

The survey is a part of the Beijing-okyo Forum, an annual gathering of senior government officials and representatives from Chinese and Japanese NGOs designed to improve communication and understanding between the two countries.

Conducted every year for five years now, the survey focused on two different groups of people: ordinary citizens, and intellectuals. In China, the intellectual group was comprised mainly of university students from well-known schools like Peking University. In Japan, the "intellectual" group was mainly made up of previous members of Genron NPO.

Among ordinary Chinese polled, 35.7 percent said they have "very good" or "relatively good" impressions of Japan, a 5.5-percentage-point increase compared with last year. 45.2 percent of Chinese students had a positive impression of Japan, two percentage points more than last year. Only 26.6 percent of Japanese have a positive impression of China, however.

Still, an overwhelming majority of the respondents from each country said Sino-Japanese relations were "important" and wanted their leaders to deepen talks and cooperation with each other.

But 51.9 percent of ordinary people and 42.4 percent of students in China said they saw no change in relations between the two countries over the last year. In Japan, 64.8 percent of those ordinary people and 53.4 percent of intellectuals surveyed shared the view that there was no improvement in bilateral ties this year.

Historical issues and territorial disputes remain two major obstacles to improving bilateral relations, the survey found. What concerns the Chinese most are historical issues, visits by Japanese officials to Yasukuni Shrine, and the Nanjing Massacre.

Perceptions on economic and trade relations have improved, though. About 47 percent of ordinary Japanese said China had been "helpful" this year in fighting the global economic crisis, compared with just 30 percent last year. The percent of Japanese intellectuals who said Chinese economic growth was good for Japan increased from 65.8 percent to 81.4 percent this year.

Cooperation in East Asian issues, trade and investment, energy, and the environment and climate change top the list of common concerns that people in China and Japan want their leaders to talk about in bilateral meetings, the survey found.

Civil exchanges were regarded by the most people from the both countries as an important way to improve relations. 90.7 percent of the students and 85.7 percent of the ordinary people in China and 95.8% of intellectuals and 74.8% of the ordinary people in Japan viewed civil exchanges as "important" or "relatively important".

Chinese and Japanese both learn about each other's countries mostly through television news and newspapers, the survey found.

(China Daily August 26, 2009)