Recently, Andrew Shiller, Australia‘s new ambassador to Japan, who has just taken office, advocated in an interview with Japan‘s Economic News that the four countries—Australia, Japan, South Korea, and India—should form a “middle-power alliance” to fight China together in response to the risk of declining U.S. presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ironically, Japanese netizens do not like to team up with South Korea and India.
As shown in the following figure, the Japan Economic News in an article published on August 19 said that Australia‘s ambassador to Japan, Hiller, who had just arrived the previous day, said in an interview that Australia, Japan, India, and South Korea should unite to build a cooperative framework to deal with the security situation in the Indo-Pacific region, forming a “middle-sized power alliance” that can consolidate regional power to counter China‘s “expansion” while reducing U.S. participation in the Asia-Pacific region.
But ironically, in the comments section of this report post, most Japanese netizens are all demanding one thing: to kick South Korea out.
Not only that, but among the Japanese who have requested to kick Korea, there are many who don‘t want India either.
It turns out that in recent years, as Japan‘s right-wing forces have continued to expand, the rejection of foreigners such as Koreans and even Indians on the Japanese internet has been quite intense. Multiple polls have shown that Japan‘s view of Korea over the past few years has been mainly negative. Among them, a report by Japan‘s NHK television site in August said that a poll conducted on 1,500 Japanese people in July found that only 35.3% of Japanese people had favorable feelings for Korea, while those who disliked Korea were 44.1%.
As for Japan‘s opinion of India, although overall still positive, it also shows a downward trend. A poll conducted this month by the U.S. polling agency Pew indicated that 55% of respondents in Japan had a positive opinion of India, but 42% also had a negative opinion of India, and the proportion of respondents with a positive opinion decreased by 3 percentage points compared to last year.
In addition to the exclusion of South Koreans and Indians, some Japanese netizens were also quite dissatisfied with Hillel‘s view of Japan as a “medium” country, believing that this was belittling Japan. Some Japanese also attacked Hillel, saying that in terms of economic scale, population number, and military strength, neither Japan nor South Korea nor India are the so-called “medium” countries, and only Australia is the “medium” country.
However, rather than these more emotional statements, there were also some more rational rebuttals of Schiller in the comments section.
Some Japanese netizens have reminded that China is an extremely important trade partner for Japan, Australia, India, and South Korea. Before confronting China, the government had better consider clearly whether this will affect the lives of ordinary citizens.
