Hong Kong Poll Results About Japan

In brief, the unlinkable SCMP reported:

Most Hongkongers think Japan should not have approved new history textbooks that gloss over wartime atrocities, according to a recent survey.  Ninety-three per cent of respondents said they found the situation unacceptable. More than 73 per cent said it worsened their impression of Japan, according to the poll by New Youth Forum, Education Convergence and the Chinese History Education Society. It interviewed 1,161 people last week. 

I don't know why SCMP wants to cut off the rest of the survey.  But Ming Pao (via Yahoo! News) and Wen Wei Po tell us a bit more about this survey:

• 85% said that they were paying attention to the current affair
• 94% said that Japan's revisionist approach to its history textbooks was 'unacceptable'
• 72% said that Japan's revisionist approach to its history textbooks was 'totally unacceptable' (note: subset of 'unacceptable')
• 90% agreed that China and the international community should apply more pressure on Japan
• 83% agreed that they need to learn more about contemporary Chinese history as a result of this incident
• 73% agreed that their impression of Japan has worsened
• 72% disapproved of a permanent seat for Japan at the UN Security Council
• 50% agreed that the Hong Kong secondary school curriculum does not present enough about contemporary Chinese history
• 50% said that boycotting Japanese goods will not create enough pressure on the Japanese government
• 44% said that boycotting Japanese goods will create enough pressure on the Japanese government.

These survey results may be uncomfortable to some people, who believe that the overly emotionally and intellectually irrational responses by the mainland Chinese was due to the indoctrination in their own history textbooks on Sino-Japanese relationships.  But shouldn't Hong Kong be a different case, since its history textbooks are presumably more liberal and fact-based?  Yet, the responses of the Hong Kong survey respondents are still overwhelminglingly against Japan's decisions with respect to the new history textbooks.  If anything, this episode has encouraged the people of Hong Kong to learn more about their Chinese heritage.

(Yahoo! News)  April 22, 2005.

According to the latest survey conducted by the TVBS Public Opinion Poll Center and Yahoo! of about 20,000 netizens in Taiwan, 60% support the anti-Japanese demonstrations in China while 36% do not support them.

(Yahoo! News)  April 27, 2005

According to a joint survey conducted by China's Chinese Social Sciences Academy, South Korea's Dongya Daily and Japan's Asahi Shimbun of more than 5,400 citizens in China, South Korea and Japan:
- 64% of Chinese and 63% of South Koreans don't like Japan, compared to a figure of 34% in 1997 China and 53% in 2002 South Korea
- 28% of Japanese dislike China and 22% dislike South Korea
- 84% of Chinese and 87% of South Korean oppose and 68% of Japanese support a permanent seat for Japan in the UN Security Council

Meanwhile, inside China, the Japanese market research company Searchina conducted interviews with 2,000 Chinese persons on the subject of Chinese attitudes towards Japan.  This study was made through email invitations to consumers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Liaoning and Sichuan to fill out online surveys.  Here are the survey results (Ming Pao via Yahoo! News):

• 28% said that Japan was "very unfriendly" towards China
• 36% said that Japan was "somewhat unfriendly"
• 10% said that Japan was "somewhat friendly"
• 2% said that Japan was "very friendly"

The survey respondents admit that about half of them are "very unfriendly" and "somewhat unfriendly" towards Japanese people.

As for the diplomatic relationship between the two countries, 21% said "very bad": and 37% said "bad."  As for the future diplomatic relationship, 14% said "absolutely no chance for good development" and 8% said "nothing especially good."

These poll results fit in with the previous post The Roots of Anti-Japanese Feelings in China on the current hue and cry over the Japanese school textbooks, and lead towards answering the question of Are The Anti-Japanese Demonstrations Spontaneous or Stage-Managed?