Opinion
Journalists need to tell stories of common man
By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-31 07:32
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Some 20 of us Chinese and Japanese senior journalists and media researchers sat for four hours in the media panel of Beijing-Tokyo Forum, brainstorming what the media of both countries can do to help improve mutual understanding between the Chinese and Japanese.
The panel discussion was also joined by some 50 young journalists from China and Japan.
In the latest survey of 1,500 Japanese intellectuals and common people, Genron NPO, a Japanese think tank co-sponsoring the forum, found that more than 70 percent of the Japanese polled said they had bad impressions of China.
The reasons why the Japanese have a negative feeling about China included its failure in handling food safety, its grabbing of natural resources and energy, and its obsession with war history, Yasushi Kudo, head of Genron NPO, said in his keynote presentation at the panel.
A poll of some 1,617 urban residents and 1,007 students in China conducted by Horizon Survey and sponsored by China Daily revealed that some 56 percent of urban residents did not have good impressions of Japan. What is noteworthy is that only 34 percent of the students had negative feelings about Japan, meaning Japan's image in China is improving.
The Chinese student respondents pointed out that the problems hindering future China-Japan relations include not only the two countries' territorial disputes but also the distrust between the two peoples. Some 40 percent of the Chinese students said the Japanese media should improve their coverage of China.
Japanese journalists were aghast at the Chinese survey, finding that more than one-third of the Chinese residents, as well as students, still consider Japan a militarist country.
"We don't even possess a nuclear weapon," Mitsuko Shimomura, former editor of Asahi Weekly, remarked.
However, as discussions deepened, it became clear that mutual understanding between the Chinese and Japanese should start with the media, especially from the Japanese side. If the Japanese journalists do not have sufficient knowledge about contemporary China, they will have a difficult time telling full China stories to their audiences and readers.
Kazuo Ogura, former Japanese ambassador to France, said he believed that Chinese society still has an anti-Japan tendency, but Wang Fang, a senior international journalist of People's Daily, said only a tiny percentage of Chinese are strongly against Japan.
Many Japanese do not seem to know a lot about how much the Chinese now rely on the Internet for information and how tens of millions of Chinese are micro-blogging (Chinese language twittering) online.
They are also obsessed over the poisonous dumpling incident, blaming the Chinese for lack of information. Traces of methamidophos, a highly toxic insecticide, were found in frozen dumplings produced in China, and sickened 10 people in Japan between December 2007 and January 2008.
A man in Hebei province was arrested this April for injecting poison into the frozen dumplings, and was prosecuted on Aug 12. No verdict has been announced.
My Chinese colleagues and I fully understand the Japanese frustration. But we believe we have already come a long way in our journalistic endeavors to try reporting both home and international events objectively and from a broad perspective.
As Xu Hong, a professor of journalism at Peking University, and Shimomura both pointed out, the media of the two countries should try to tell more life stories of common people.
Above all, I believe there should be mutual respect of each other's countries and we journalists should try to get rid of ideological bias when reporting on the other country.
The author is Assistant Editor-in-Chief of China Daily. She can be reached at lixing@chinadaily.com.cn.
