Can China-Japan youth exchanges and goodwill overcome their deep political chill?

Beijing and Tokyo hope to build bonds with young people, but strained regional ties and sinking public opinion are blocking the welcome mats

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Laura ZhouandYijing Shen

Published: 6:00am, 8 Sep 2024

Yasushi Kaifu has never been to China, and the 15-year-old Tokyo resident does not plan on visiting any time soon.

Few of Kaifu’s high school friends have ever travelled to China either, and as reports of tensions in the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait mount, so too do their negative views and unease about Japan’s big neighbour.

“Because I live in Japan, I would be worried if there was a big war once a conflict broke out in the Taiwan Strait,” he said.

Keitoku Ikegami, 24, a graduate student at International Christian University in Tokyo, has been to China, but said visiting now would not be an easy decision.

“As a Japanese person, considering political tensions between the two countries, I will be quite hesitant on whether I should really go to China,” he said.

The crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan. Photo: Kyodo

When he was 10, Ikegami went on a family trip to the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan. His most recent visit to the country was last year, when bilateral tensions spiked again after China imposed a ban on all imports of Japanese seafood following Tokyo’s controversial discharge of water from its damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.