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Japan should help U.S. defend Taiwan: Japanese poll

ROC Central News Agency

2010/12/24 17:52:55

Tokyo, Dec. 24 (CNA) Nearly 60 percent of Japanese agreed to their country offering logistical support to the United States if America had to assist Taiwan militarily in a showdown with China, according to the results of a Japanese poll released Friday.

In the survey conducted by Japanese daily The Asahi Shimbun Dec. 4-5, 57 percent of the 3,000 respondents said Japan's self-defense forces should provide transportation and other logistic support to the U.S. military if war were to break out across the Taiwan Strait.

Only 30 percent of respondents opposed the idea.

On the same question asked in a parallel poll conducted in the U.S. by Harris Interactive for the newspaper Dec. 2-6, 65 percent of the 1,009 respondents said Japanese self-defense forces should assist the U.S. logistically while 23 percent said there was no such need.

The Asahi survey in Japan also found that an increasing number of Japanese feel that China's military poses a threat to their country. Some 32 percent of respondents felt that way in this year's poll, up from 13 percent in 2005 and 8 percent in 2001.

North Korea was perceived as Japan's biggest military threat, with almost half (49 percent) of the respondents citing it as such.

Some 72 percent of the Japanese respondents felt Japan should strengthen cooperation with the U.S., and 61 percent of the Americans felt their country should do the same with Japan, according to the surveys.

The polls also found that 51 percent of the Japanese respondents and 55 percent of the Americans surveyed thought their countries should beef up cooperation with China.

Which country is more important to the Japanese: China or the U.S.? Over two-thirds (68 percent) of Japanese said the U.S. , compared with a mere 15 percent who pointed to China.

But when Americans were asked which country was more important to them, half of the U.S. respondents named China and only 33 percent said Japan.

As many as 78 percent of Japanese respondents said the Japan-U.S. security treaty should be maintained and 68 percent of the Americans agreed.

With China boosting its military capability, 48 percent of those surveyed in Japan said their country should increase its military presence in its southwestern islands to respond to the threat, but 36 percent opposed the suggestion.

Over half (51 percent) of the Japanese polled said U.S. President Barack Obama should visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two Japanese cities devastated by U.S. atomic bombs toward the end of World War II, while 36 percent saw no need for him to do so.

The Japanese poll also had a domestic component. It found that 60 percent of those surveyed did not support incumbent Prime Minister Naoto Kan, whose popularity stood at 24 percent. (By Chang Fang-ming and S.C. Chang) enditem/ls