YouTuber Yang Xiaoxi, who runs a channel with 220,000 subscribers — over 90 percent of them Japanese — shared an example of how social media can shape perceptions.

"A Japanese high school girl once sent me a message saying, 'Before I watched your videos, I had a negative view of China. But through your content, I came to genuinely understand the country and became interested in it. I decided to visit China and, to my surprise, really liked it. Now I've made the decision to study abroad there," Yang recalled.

Her story highlights the vital role that social media plays in shifting public opinion across borders.

"If traditional mainstream media serves as a grand gateway for China-Japan exchange, then social media provides countless small windows," she said. "Through these windows, people can share everyday moments and the many facets of each country with one another."

Starting in 2024, the Oriental New Newspaper, a bilingual Chinese-Japanese media outlet, in partnership with the Chinese embassy in Japan, launched an initiative that sends 100 Japanese university students to China annually for study tours, with the aim of fostering deeper exchanges between the younger generations of both countries.

Sun Ran, editor-in-chief of the Oriental New Newspaper, underscored the importance of expanding the reach of grassroots exchanges.

"People-to-people exchange is no longer confined to offline encounters — it increasingly functions as a medium for sharing information and generating emotional resonance among broader audiences," she said. "The positive influence of these efforts can ripple outward, inspiring more individuals to engage in meaningful cross-cultural exchange."