Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights

POLITICS: Growing Distrust Among Publics of Asian Powers

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 21 2006 (IPS) - Nationalist sentiment and distrust of traditional rivals appear to be on the rise among the publics of key powers in Asia, according to recent surveys of five of the region’s countries released here Thursday by the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Those feelings appear to be particularly intense in China and Japan, although hostility between the people in Pakistan and India remains high despite sporadic efforts to achieve détente between the two countries, according to the polls, which were conducted last spring.

In addition, Indians appear significantly more favourably disposed toward Japan than toward China, according to the surveys, which canvassed opinions of nearly 6,000 respondents in the four countries, as well 2,000 more in Russia and the United States.

Only 28 percent of Chinese said they had a favourable opinion of Japan, in contrast to the 71 percent who said their view was either very or somewhat unfavourable.

Japanese showed even greater hostility toward China: 77 percent said their view was unfavourable; only 21 percent said it was favourable – a dramatic decline since 2002 when 55 percent of Japanese respondents said they viewed China favourably.

At the same time, two-thirds of Indian respondents said they had a favourable impression of Japanese, twice as many as those who said they had a favourable impression of China.

The survey results come at a sensitive moment, particularly in Northeast Asia, where North Korea’s nuclear programme has heightened tensions and the imminent replacement of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi – whose annual visits to a controversial nationalist shrine have provoked great anger in China and South Korea – by the even more nationalistic Shinzo Abe has raised considerable anxiety.

Abe, whose grandfather was imprisoned as a suspected Class A war criminal only to be elected prime minister 12 years later, has pledged to revise the Japanese Constitution to allow Japanese troops to deploy overseas and publicly rejected the official view that Tokyo committed aggression against its Asian neighbours in World War II. Abe has also been particularly outspoken against both China and North Korea.

According to a Pew analysis that accompanied the survey results, much of the current antipathy toward Japan in China is rooted in Tokyo’s military conquests of the 1930’s and 1940s.

Four of every five Chinese respondents said they believe that Japan has not apologised sufficiently for its actions in World War II. The same percentage said that they opposed Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Class A war criminals are memorialised.

Japanese antipathy toward China, on the other hand, appeared mostly related to anxiety over Beijing’s military ambitions, according to the Pew analysis.

Ninety-three percent of Japanese respondents characterised China’s growing military power as a “bad thing” compared, to a still-high 76 percent of Russians, and 63 percent of Indians. By contrast, 95 percent of Chinese respondents said it was a “good thing.”

Respondents in both countries were reluctant to ascribe positive attributes to the other. More than two-thirds in both countries said people from the other were arrogant, greedy, selfish and nationalistic, although Japanese respondents were significantly harsher in their judgements on the latter two characteristics than their Chinese counterparts.

One in three respondents in both countries considered the other country to be an “adversary”. While 53 percent of Japanese described China as a “serious problem,” only one third of Chinese characterised Japan that way.

Asked which country posed the greatest danger to their own, 58 percent of Chinese named the United States and 22 percent named Japan. Asked the same question, 39 percent of Japanese named China and 35 percent North Korea, according to the survey, which was carried out before Pyongyang’s Jul. 4 missile tests.

Respondents in both countries appear to have become more nationalistic. Asked their reaction to the proposition that “Our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others,” three of four Chinese agreed. Two in three agreed to that proposition four years ago. Asked the same question, 83 percent of Japanese agreed in 2006, up from 73 percent four years ago.

Similarly, asked their opinion of the proposition that “Our way of life needs to be protected against foreign influence, 69 percent of Chinese agreed, up five percent from 2002. The difference was even more striking in Japan: 78 percent agreed with the statement in the latest survey, up 15 percent since 2002.

If Japanese expressed fear about China’s growing military power, they felt less concern about China’s economy. Two-thirds of Japanese respondents said China’s economic growth was a “good thing,” compared to a 48 percent plurality among Russian respondents and a 40 percent minority among Indian respondents.

Indians were also the most likely to see China replacing the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower within a relatively short time.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said Beijing will displace Washington within just 20 years, compared 33 percent of Americans, 27 percent of Russians, 26 percent of Japanese, and only 17 percent of Chinese themselves. Nearly 60 percent of Japanese said China will never replace the U.S. atop the global power hierarchy.

Among U.S. respondents, a 47 percent plurality said they felt favourably about China, while 63 percent said they felt that way about Japan. U.S. respondents were more than twice as likely to feel favourably about India (56 percent) than about Pakistan (27 percent).

Two thirds of Pakistani respondents said they had unfavorable views of India, but only 50 percent of Indians felt that way about Pakistan. At the same time, only one third of Pakistans said they had favourable impressions of Japan and China.