Just as Japan and China mark the 40th anniversary of the 1972 normalization of diplomatic ties amid ever-deepening economic relations, public sentiments toward each country appear to have fallen to the lowest point in decades. News over the past several weeks have been awash with reports of massive daily protests on Chinese streets and a diplomatic stalemate over the Senkaku Islands dispute.
The mass media in both countries have a major role to play in dispelling the lingering mistrust and perception gap between the two nations and charting out the future course of bilateral relations from a broad perspective, according to journalists and media experts from Japan and China who took part in a recent symposium in Tokyo.
They were speaking at the event organized Aug. 29 under the theme, "40 years of the Japan-China relationship as seen from media reports." The symposium was jointly organized by the Keizai Koho Center and the Center for East Asia Media Studies at Hokkaido University's Research Faculty of Media and Communication.