‘We like Japanese people, not govt’

BEIJING: A survey showed that most Chinese who study in Japan don’t hate the country thus challenging the common view, that they turn anti-Japanese due to discrimination and what many in China see as Japan’s whitewashing of wartime atrocities.

The results were made public as Wen Jiabao, the first Chinese premier to visit Japan since 2000, told that, bilateral relations were unshakable for 70 years after the Nanjing Massacre in which China says, Japanese soldiers killed 3,00,000 Chinese.

Japan came out on top in the survey in which 1,478 returning students were asked to gauge their feelings towards seven countries on a 10-point scale. France came second, followed by Canada, the United States, North Korea, Russia and India.

“Feelings towards Japan are relatively positive and more positive than their feelings towards all the rest of the countries’’ according to the survey conducted by Chinese Ministry of Education’s Chinese Service Centre for Scholarly Exchange, and its deputy director Shao Wei.

According to the survey carried out in late 2006 and early 2007, the exchange of students is beneficial to both the sides from a national perspective. The results debunk the stereotype that Chinese educated in Japan are hostile towards their host.

“It challenges the (modern day) commonly held view: Those who study in the United States are pro-US, while those who study in Japan are anti-Japan”, David Zweig, director of the Centre on China’s Transnational Relations at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said.

Almost 50 per cent of respondents saw a resurgence of Japanese militarism as a ‘’serious concern’’, said Zweig. The survey said, respondents liked the Japanese people but disliked the Japanese government and the media, which they saw as very biased against China.