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第五篇 Sino-Japan Animosity Lessens Chinese and Japanese people view each other slightly more positively than last year, according to a survey released on Wednesday at a press conference in Beijing. The survey is jointly sponsored by China Daily and Genron NPO1, a Japanese think tank similar to the American Council on Foreign Relations. It also found overwhelming agreement in both countries that Sino-Japanese relations were important. The survey is a part of the Beijing-Tokyo Forum, an annual gathering of senior government officials and representatives from Chinese and Japanese NGOs2 designed to improve communication and understanding between the two countries. Conducted every year for five years now, the survey focused on two different groups of people: ordinary citizens, and intellectuals. In China, the intellectual group was comprised mainly of university students from well-known schools like Peking University. In Japan, the intellectual group was mainly made up of previous members of Genron NPO. Among ordinary Chinese polled, 35.7 percent said they have very good or relatively good impressions of Japan, a 5.5-percentage-point increase compared with last year. 45.2 percent of Chinese students had a positive impression of Japan, two percentage points more than last year. Only 26.6 percent of Japanese have a positive impression of China, however. | 
