A majority of Chinese citizens believe the United Nations, not the battlefield, is the proper venue for settling their country's maritime disputes with Japan, according to a first-of-its-kind opinion poll released last week.
The survey, as reported by the University of Western Australia's Perth USAsia Centre, undercuts growing concern that an increasingly nationalistic Chinese public is calling for the use of intimidation, perhaps force, in the disagreement over the Senkaku Islands, known as Diaoyu in China and Tiaoyutai in Taiwan.
Instead, the report claims that Chinese "are cautious about the prospect of military action over the islands and, in principle at least, open to the idea of a compromise."