Taipei, March 23 (CNA) Over half of Taiwan's people listed Japan as their favorite country but a majority described bilateral ties as neither good or bad, a survey conducted by Japan's representative office in Taiwan has found.
Japan ranks far ahead of the United States and China as the favorite foreign country of Taiwan's people, being chosen by 52 percent of respondents to a survey conducted by the Taipei office of the Interchange Association (Japan) , the country's de-facto embassy in Taiwan.
Only 8 percent of respondents said the U.S. was their favorite country, while 5 percent named China.
"The results show that people in Taiwan and Japan have good feelings about each other in general, " said Chen Tyau-her, secretary-general of the East Asian Relations Commission under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA).
In terms of the state of Taiwan-Japan relations, 28 percent of those polled described them as "good or very good, " and 63 percent said relations are "neither good nor bad." Around 62 percent of respondents described Japan as a "closely-related" country, with 13 percent among them saying that relations between Taiwan and Japan are "very close." The number was down from last year's 69 percent.
Japan is still highly popular among Taiwanese tourists, as 90 percent of respondents said it was a charismatic country and 44 percent said the northeast Asian country was their preferred destination for an overseas trip.
Europe was the second favorite destination at 29 percent.
Meanwhile, economic, trade and industrial exchanges were listed by 20 percent of respondents as the area of greatest expectations for bilateral exchanges in the future.
However, Japan lagged behind China -- 31 percent to 33 percent -- as the most important country with which Taiwan should try to seek closer relations, the survey found. The U.S. was a distant third at 16 percent.
Among areas of concern in the bilateral relationship, 36 percent of respondents said they were most worried about fishing issues while 30 percent cited anxiety over the impact of the Japan-China relationship on Japan's ties with Taiwan.
Both numbers were up from last year.
A long-standing territorial dispute over the Tiaoyutai Islands (Senkaku Islands in Japanese), which are located northeast of Taiwan, and overlapping economic waters have led to numerous conflicts and escalated tensions between Taiwan and Japan in recent years.
The Interchange Association concluded in the summary of the survey that, while most Taiwanese still view Taiwan's relationship with Japan as close, the percentage of those listing Japan as their favorite country has dropped from last year, and the appeal of Japanese food was also slightly down.
The survey of 1,018 respondents from around Taiwan was conducted from Dec. 12, 2009 to Jan. 11, 2010, and it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent. (By Chris Wang) enditem/ls