When politics divides, can content creators bring China and Japan together?

(Edited and refined by Grace Chong, with the assistance of AI translation.)

Dressed in an elegant traditional Chinese hanfu, skillfully rinsing tableware with hot tea at restaurants, and chatting casually with Shanghai taxi drivers, 28-year-old Tokyo content creator Sakaekiko Ninomiya uses her camera to document the everyday life she encounters in China.

On Instagram and RedNote, more than 70,000 followers watch through her lens as she visits local fried chicken shops and travels across different parts of China.

“This is my diary, as well as the China I have genuinely experienced,” Ninomiya told Lianhe Zaobao (LHZB) in fluent Mandarin.

After enrolling at Xiamen University in 2023, Ninomiya noticed a clear gap between Japanese stereotypes about China and the reality she was experiencing. From its highly digitalised way of life to the way people interact with one another, many aspects of everyday life in China remain unfamiliar to Japanese people. That prompted her to pick up a camera and document the “real, everyday China”.

Across the sea in Osaka, 31-year-old Chinese YouTuber Xiaolin (pseudonym) has just uploaded a vlog of himself boating through Takachiho Gorge in Miyazaki. Rather than touching on geopolitical tension, viewers’ comments have focused purely on praising the natural beauty.

Xiaolin told LHZB that since moving to Japan to study and work in 2022, he has been drawn to the country’s everyday atmosphere and culture.

“The systems in the two countries are certainly different, but there are many similarities in their underlying cultural foundations,” he said. “Sharing these authentic experiences with audiences back home is my biggest motivation for running the channel.”

Xiaolin’s camera does not stop at picturesque landscapes. He also explores issues such as anti-foreigner sentiment in Japan, the culture of overwork, and social phenomena such as hikikomori, or people who withdraw almost completely from society. He said his intention was simply to piece together a more complete, well-rounded picture of Japan for his viewers.

Caught between two sides

Yet compared with other foreign content creators, bilingual creators active across both China and Japan face a more difficult predicament. Caught in the highly sensitive and complex crossfire of politics and public opinion, they can easily find themselves in the wrong no matter what they do.

As China-Japan relations have grown increasingly strained in recent months, the chill of high-level politics has trickled down, further worsening the situation for these creators. After Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi raised the prospect of a “Taiwan contingency” during a parliamentary session last November, Beijing introduced a series of restrictions on Japan, bringing exchanges between the two countries in diplomacy, trade and people-to-people relations to a standstill.

Xiaolin observed that from December last year, there was a surge of extreme comments on his channel. Earlier this year, he also found himself attacked from both sides over a video related to the Second World War.

He had uploaded a vlog about his visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, only to be attacked by Chinese netizens for “glorifying militarism”, while Japanese netizens accused him of “doing the Chinese government’s bidding”.

“I was just documenting my visit,” he told me helplessly. “I didn’t make any judgement about the history of the Second World War, but I still got swarmed, or bei chuzheng.”

The Chinese internet term bei chuzheng (被出征, similar to getting swarmed or being cancelled) refers to a person’s social media account being flooded, often in a coordinated manner, by critical or abusive comments.

Ninomiya’s comments section is no haven of harmony either. Radical Chinese netizens have told her to “go back to Japan” and even labelled her a “spy”. Voices from Japan have been equally harsh, with netizens leaving cutting remarks such as, “Now that you’ve gone to China, don’t come back.”

A public opinion survey on China-Japan relations jointly conducted by the Japanese nonprofit Genron NPO and China International Communications Group found that since 2010, more than half of people in both China and Japan have consistently held negative views of the other country. By 2024, the proportion of Chinese respondents with a negative view of Japan had risen to 87.7%, while that of Japanese respondents with a negative view of China was even higher, at 89%.

Chen Yang, director of the Japan Research Centre at Chinese think tank Haiyi Institute, told LHZB that since 2000, major swings in public opinion in China and Japan have almost always corresponded with changes in high-level political relations. While high-level politics is not the only factor, he described it as the “primary force” affecting public opinion in the two countries.

He pointed out that this influence is not projected directly, but is shaped indirectly through the media and personal experiences. When bilateral relations become strained, slanted coverage in both countries — Chinese media focusing on Japan’s military and history, and Japanese media scrutinising the safety of Japanese people in China — can quickly reinforce the prejudice that the other side poses a threat.

Walking a fine line

The steadily intensifying antagonism has forced these content creators to tread carefully.

Ninomiya admitted that topics related to China and Japan can be interpreted differently depending on viewers’ perspectives and backgrounds. She is therefore particularly cautious about historical and political subjects, as well as content that could be interpreted as comparing the merits and drawbacks of China and Japan.

Xiaolin revealed that since being swarmed, he has temporarily avoided sensitive topics such as history, sticking instead to safer subjects such as restaurant visits and food reviews.

Ninomiya and Xiaolin both recognise that while the extreme comments serve as an emotional outlet for netizens, the deeper reason lies in the information cocoon created by the media.

Breaking through stereotypes

Ninomiya recalled that when she first arrived in China, she was unsure how to take a train or buy a ticket. A taxi driver not only told her where to go, but also got out of his taxi to help her check the route and buy a ticket.

After she posted a series of videos about such experiences, many Japanese viewers who had initially believed that “China is dangerous” sent her private messages.

“I didn’t know Chinese people could treat Japanese people with such kindness,” some wrote.

Others said, “After watching this, my impression of China has changed a little.”

Ninomiya said her camera cannot capture the whole of China. But she believes that “when we stop looking at each other solely from the perspective of one country versus another, and return to genuine interactions between people, many of the impressions we once held can actually change”.

However, Haiyi Institute’s Chen pointed out that while these cross-border content creators can somewhat improve goodwill between people in the two countries, they are “only effective to a certain degree, and it is difficult for them to completely influence or change the overall state of people-to-people friendship between China and Japan”.

Li Mingjiang, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, likewise believes that the considerable ups and downs in China-Japan political relations in recent years have triggered strong fluctuations in public sentiment. These content creators have “almost negligible influence on policy” and can exert only a “marginally positive influence” at the people-to-people level.

The two creators are also well aware that a few heartwarming vlogs can do little to overturn the longstanding stereotypes and antagonism between the peoples of the two countries.

But Ninomiya believes that “even if it only makes one person willing to learn a little more about the other side, that is meaningful”.

Similarly, Xiaolin said, “Even if I can only make ten viewers realise that ‘they are just like us — ordinary people simply trying to live their lives seriously’, then these records are still worth continuing.”

A long-time viewer of Xiaolin from Shanghai told LHZB that his videos made him realise that Japanese society is not monolithic in its views. Compared with official propaganda, “I am more willing to accept what he has to say”.

A viewer from Tokyo likewise said, “The unembellished and more authentic everyday life shown in Ninomiya’s videos has actually made me more interested in Chinese society.”

The Japan Times, an English-language Japanese newspaper, has noted that compared with official diplomacy, independent content creators can gradually reshape public perceptions without relying on dry policy messaging or grand narratives. Instead, they do so through small, repeated glimpses of authentic everyday life.

Chen, however, believes that official diplomacy and people-to-people exchanges “must interact positively with each other for short-term political detente to gradually translate into lasting improvements in public perceptions, while also strengthening the resilience of bilateral relations amid political fluctuations”.

Few bridges left standing

With high-level exchanges now close to freezing point, these content creators are serving as some of the few remaining bridges connecting the people of the two countries.

As Ninomiya put it: “If my content can reduce the distance between the people of the two countries, and spark even a little curiosity about each other, then I think that is the practical effect I can have as a content creator.”

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “避开地缘锋芒 中日跨国博主用镜头缝合民间认知”.

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