Japanese public impressions of China remain "unfavorable," an annual survey showed Thursday, amid a lingering territorial dispute, a U.S.-China trade war and unrest in Hong Kong.

The survey, conducted by the Japanese nonprofit think tank Genron NPO and the China International Publishing Group, found that 84.7 percent of Japanese respondents have an "unfavorable" impression of China, down 1.6 percentage points from a year earlier.

The survey was conducted amid a recent thaw in Sino-Japanese ties that had previously grown frosty over wartime history and territory.