Strained bilateral relations lead to 10% decline of Japanese in China

The Japanese Foreign Ministry has reported that from October 2012 to October 2013, the amount of Japanese nationals either living permanently or for more than three months in China has declined by more than 10 per cent. Within the same year, the amount of Japanese living overseas has experiences had a 0.7 per cent increase.

Overall, China still hosts the third-largest number of Japanese expats in the world, behind the United States and Brazil. Gubei district in Shanghai has the largest concentration of Japanese nationals abroad. With a community of over 66,000, Japanese are the third-largest expat group in China, behind Koreans with over 120,000 and Americans with over 71,000.

According to experts, the reason behind the change is because of the troubled relations between Beijing and Tokyo. Qu Xing, the head of the China Institute of International Studies, said that Japan's attitude towards historical issues and the government's behavior during sovereignty disputes, such as disagreements over the Diaoyu Islands, has harmed the environment for trade and the cultural links between the two countries.

On Friday last week, Japanese Cabinet ministers paid homage to the 69th anniversary of Japan's World War Two defeat by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. Honoring Japanese war criminals undoubtedly revved up tension between the two countries. It is incidents like these that Ma Junwei, a scholar at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, says are the reasons behind the "growing unwillingness" of Japanese to remain in China.

Alongside negative views by experts that relations will not improve, some more positive authorities on the issue hope both countries will put their differences aside as negative relations are likely to affect business. China is a vast market for Japan, especially the auto-market where joint ventures between the two nations are common. Japanese firms also create many job opportunities in China. Despite this, Qu Xing stands by the view that "as long as the two nations are not in a state of war and their diplomatic relationship continues, trade and cultural links will persist."