About 40 percent of Chinese citizens feel Russia has done nothing wrong in its invasion of Ukraine, according to an extremely rare joint Japan-China opinion poll.

The Chinese respondents also seem more pessimistic than their Japanese counterparts about maintaining peace in East Asia.

The survey, conducted by Japanese think tank Genron NPO and the China International Communications Group, asked respondents for their views on such sensitive topics as Taiwan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Yasushi Kudo, head of the Genron NPO, explained the difficulties in turning the research program into reality in Asahi Shimbun interviews before and after the Tokyo-Beijing Forum was held in the two cities via videoconference on Dec. 7-8.

“Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we desperately wanted to foster Japan-China cooperation toward not only evading conflicts but also promoting peace and stability in East Asia and peace and development around the world,” Kudo said.

About 100 experts, journalists and young individuals from Japan and China discussed such issues as “peace and order,” “diplomacy,” “security,” “economy,” “digitization,” and the new theme of “youth dialogue” during the two-day forum.

A cooperative peace statement, issued toward the end of the forum, said “all conflicts should be resolved by peaceful means” and “all relevant parties must refrain from taking any action that could ratchet up regional tensions.”

Excerpts from the interview follow:

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Question: The forum, a framework for private-sector dialogue between Japan and China, was organized by Genron NPO and its Chinese counterpart for the 18th time this year. Will you explain the annual opinion poll conducted in both countries before the Tokyo-Beijing Forum?

Kudo: U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, sparking a strong backlash from China. Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine started before that. For these reasons, it would be unacceptable to eliminate questions about Ukraine and Taiwan from this year’s opinion poll. So we, the Japanese side, presented 30 questions for the Chinese side.

But, as we had expected, the Chinese side rejected all our prepared questions.

Were it not for the discussions about Ukraine or Taiwan, participants would have only been able to engage in abstract debate at the Tokyo-Beijing Forum. And such private dialogue would have no significance.

We again asked the Chinese side to include questions about Ukraine and Taiwan, but we were rejected again.

After repeating the cycle, an agreement was finally reached to include two questions each about Ukraine and Taiwan in the survey.

It is the first time a question exclusively concerning Taiwan has been featured in the joint opinion poll coinciding with the Tokyo-Beijing Forum, which marked its 18th anniversary this year.

Q: What’s your take on survey results?

A: Especially noteworthy is that anxiety over the peace environment in East Asia has grown more in China than in Japan.

Asked for “likely sites of possible military conflicts in East Asia,” an overwhelming number of Chinese cited the Taiwan Strait.

Respondents were asked to pick only one of several options, including the Korean Peninsula, the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Takeshima islets. The Taiwan Strait was selected by 48.6 percent.

Some 56.7 percent of the Chinese respondents said a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait “will transpire in a few years” or “at some point in the future.”

In Japan, the ratio topped 40 percent.

Q: What were the findings about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

A: We really wanted to know what Chinese people thought of that development. More than 70 percent of Japanese said Russia was in violation of the U.N. Charter and international law, but the ratio was as low as 20 percent in China.

About 30 percent of the Chinese said that what Russia was going is wrong but due consideration should be paid to Russia’s side of the story. And 40 percent believed Russia was fighting solely for national defense and doing nothing wrong.

To the amazement of us and experts around the world, so many Chinese citizens expressed their understanding of the Russian side.

Q: What were the feelings toward “Japan-China cooperation in the Ukrainian problem”?

A: The percentage of those who said Japan and China should work together for humanitarian assistance, such as rescuing refugees, was an astonishing 58 percent in China.

The rate was as high as 40 percent in Japan.

Nearly half of the Chinese, or 48.2 percent, said a U.N. peacekeeping force should be deployed after a cease-fire agreement is signed. This result is extremely interesting, too.

Japan and China sent units for peacekeeping operations (PKO) in Cambodia for the first time in the first half of the 1990s. The survey findings showed Chinese are positive toward providing PKO and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, just like in the previous time.

Q: What other important indications were revealed in the survey?

A: Respondents each year pick the names of politicians they know in the other nation. The Chinese politician known most broadly in Japan had been Mao Zedong.

But Xi Jinping overtook Mao by less than 1 percent in the latest survey for the first time.

Like last year, Shinzo Abe topped the list of the most famous Japanese politicians in China, followed by Junichiro Koizumi.

Q: What else has happened with the Tokyo-Beijing Forum since its introduction in 2005?

A: In spring that year, fierce anti-Japan demonstrations struck China in response to then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to (war-related) Yasukuni Shrine, issues over Japan’s history textbooks and discussions to make Japan a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

Shortly before this, I thought private-level dialogue was essential between Japan and China. I had never visited China before, but I headed for Beijing by myself to call for “dialogue” with Chinese media executives and think tanks.

No one listened to my proposal at first. But the Chinese side grew alarmed at the worsening Japan-China ties and then jumped at the chance.

The first opinion poll in 2005 revealed that a stunning 60 percent of Chinese regarded Japan as a militarist state. No one knew about official development assistance from Japan.

The joint Japan-China opinion poll was initially conducted just for academic purposes, and its findings were not supposed to be made widely public under our agreement with the Chinese side.

Still, I presented the results at the forum venue to share issues with Chinese participants. The joint research results have since been unveiled before the forum starts.

There are no other long-running surveys that trace changes in public opinion in China.

Q: What do you think about the soured Japan-China ties in the 50th anniversary of their normalized diplomatic relationship?

A: In the 2013 forum, we worked out a war-renouncing Beijing consensus.

The Japanese government’s acquisition of some of the Senkaku Islands from private ownership escalated anti-Japan sentiment in China a year earlier. The opinion poll results, which we found difficult to accept, showed about half of Chinese deemed Japan as hegemonistic.

As many nations believed the standoff in the East China Sea was reaching a flashpoint, we pride ourselves on having released a landmark war-renouncing consensus at the time.

Q: What are your feelings about the 18th Tokyo-Beijing Forum?

A: Although the Japanese and Chinese sides each time have formed some sort of agreement based on discussions during the forum, I felt it would be “difficult” to reach a consensus this time after seeing how debate went on the first day.

But we had a foundation for dialogue built over 18 years. It was our great pleasure to reaffirm through the two-day debate that a stable relationship of trust had been formed between us.

Q: Why was a joint statement released at the end of all sessions in the forum?

A: We reached two basic agreements following the two-day discussions over how to deal with the historical difficulties that Asia and other parts of the world are facing.

One agreement was that each nation’s sovereignty and land should be respected, and maximum possible efforts should be made to peacefully resolve any conflicts. The second agreement was that international cooperation should be promoted to prevent further divisiveness in the world.

To achieve those goals, it is indispensable to mend Japan-China relations.

We agreed that the meaning of the four important bilateral documents signed over the 50 years following the normalization of diplomatic relations should be reconfirmed, and that efforts should be made to fulfill their content even under changing circumstances.

The dialogue between private parties like us should play a part in preparing an environment—a step ahead of the governments--to accomplish these goals. With this strong sense of responsibility, we made public those agreements in the form of a “cooperative peace statement.”

Japan-China relations will have many ups and downs from here on out. We are looking to settle challenges one by one via private-sector approaches.