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French Editor: G. Delamotte. Translation: Jonathan Hall
Are the younger generations of Chinese anti-Japanese? Sonoda Shigeto believes that this sentiment is greatly exaggerated
In an interview with Tanaka Akihito published in Chuô Kôron, Mr. Okamoto Yukio stated his view that anti-Japanese sentiments among Chinese youth had reached a new peak, because of their nationalist education.
However, many studies contradict these views. The 2003 survey on Asian attitudes to Japan, for example, found that in China 29.7% of the population thought that Japan had a good or quite good influence on their country, whereas 39.8% considered that influence to be bad or quite bad, and 30.4% did not reply. So the majority of the replies were indeed negative. But among young people in their 20s, the corresponding figures were 31.7%, 27.2%, and 26.5% respectively.
The Chinese Institute of Sociology's centre for media research conducted a study during the demonstrations in April 2005, which found that the numbers claiming to like or quite like Japan amounted to 28.5% of the total, which was 10 points higher than in the previous study of 2001. The proportion had risen particularly sharply in the younger age group.
What is the reason for this mistaken view about young Chinese people's attitudes to Japan? It probably arises from the Japanese feeling of being under attack. What would they say to Chinese visitors to Japan who might hear the loudspeaker vans of the extreme right bawling out their slogans and conclude that Japan is shifting to the right? If these excesses are now accepted as normal, why aren't the Chinese demonstrations seen in the same light?
The development of a new self-awareness in China
The Japanese loudspeaker vans have been there for a long time whereas the demonstrations in China are new.
For the last ten years China has been in a situation of social vacuum and overturned values. The years of the Cultural Revolution saw the imposition of the ideology of class struggle. In an egalitarian society, where social progress had become the sole source of national pride, such events as the rape of Nanking became politicised. While certain people had anti-Japanese feelings, they were unable to express them. It should be stressed, however, that this situation enabled the 1972 declaration and the re-establishment of diplomatic relations.
With the progress of the reforms, and the development of Southern China in particular, class differences have reappeared, people's perceptions of the progress have changed, and a new ideology has become necessary to maintain social control.
A love-hate relationship: ambivalent feelings towards the resurgent China
Faced with a China which is asserting its presence in the world, the Japanese have divided feelings. These are very similar to their former attitudes towards the United States. Being on the winning side in the Second World War, China had a seat on the Security Council, but Japan paid it no war reparations. While Japan was enjoying a long period of rapid growth, China embarked on the "Great Leap Forward" and the Cultural Revolution. The Japanese felt that they had lost out to the Americans, but not to the Chinese. They had very few guilt feelings, even though psychological barriers had been set up which made it impossible to conceive of repeating acts similar to those perpetrated during the war. The Chinese sense of grievance, however, was enough to lock both countries into a vicious circle.
In addition, in the 1990s when China was undergoing rapid development, Japan entered into "the lost decade". As China gained self-confidence and Japan's self-confidence declined, these two opposing states of mind disturbed the delicate balance in the relations between the two countries.
In this unsettled context, Chinese feelings towards Japan combine hatred and contempt with envy and fear. As long as the problems inherited from history persist, they will draw their force not from the past but from the present.