How the Fukushima water spill has become a major diplomatic mess between Japan and China

The controversial decision of japanese government to pour purified water from the destroyed fukushima nuclear power plant to the Pacific Ocean continues to bring both economic and diplomatic consequences for the Japanese.

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The efforts of both the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), and the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, to explain that the plan does not entail any type of risk to the environment or to people, have been of little use. an argument supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) itself, to convince its neighbors.

And among them stands out the case of China, which has been opposed to the dumping plan since it was announced two years ago.

The Asian giant is the main buyer of Japanese marine products. It is estimated that Japanese exports to China and Hong Kong alone amount to 1.1 billion dollars annually, half of the total generated by said industry in Japan.

However, On Thursday the 24th, it decided to suspend all Japanese fish importsan extension to the measure taken in July and that applied only to products from the Fukushima region and other nearby prefectures.

The reason, they say from Beijing, would be “protect the health of Chinese consumers”. Well, despite the approvals that the plan has, China qualifies as “extremely selfish and an act of irresponsibility” the plan that involves dumping one million tons of water stored in the nuclear power plant over the next 30 years.

“China is not the only country that has raised doubts about this download. South Korea has launched a similar ban on Japanese marine products. It is understood that the water has gone through a cleaning process that has freed it from almost all residues -except tritium- and formally there should be no major concern. However, there are politicians and scientists who consider a more detailed or prolonged study necessary before the spill. That has generated special suspicion. On the other hand, in China there is much question as to whether this option was the cheapest that Japan could have chosen. There were other methods of evaporation or dumping underground that would have been ten or a hundred times more expensive than this option of dumping them into the ocean.“, explains to Trade Marco Carrasco, professor of East Asian Studies at the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the University of San Marcos.

In the image you can see the tanks (in blue) where the wastewater produced by the Fukushima plant is stored.

However, the tailored consequences not only remained on the economic level but have escalated to the diplomatic one.

This Monday the 28th, the Japanese Government summoned the Chinese ambassador in Tokyo to protest the campaign of telephone harassment that has been unleashed against Japanese companies and that presumably would be being orchestrated from the Chinese Government.

According to a statement from the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Vice Foreign Minister Masataka Okano met with Ambassador Wu Jianghao to convey Tokyo’s concerns and urge him to inform its citizens instead of “uselessly arouse people’s concern by giving information that has no scientific basis”.

All this occurs after videos went viral on social networks in which Chinese netizens are seen calling Japanese numbers. According to the Japanese public radio NHK, thousands of these calls were addressed to the Fukushima government and workers at the nuclear plant, who, when answering, heard insults such as “idiot” in Chinese.

Prime Minister Kishida described as “regrettable” the acts of harassment carried out by Chinese citizens against Japanese companies after the start of the plan to dump water in Fukushima. (JIJI Press / AFP /)

However, the calls were not only limited to those numbers, since from bakeries to Japanese aquariums they have reported receiving thousands of calls of this type every day since the start of the water spill.

“Similar incidents have also occurred in China, against companies linked to Japan. It is extremely unfortunate and we are deeply concerned.”, says the vice chancellor in the statement where he stresses the suspicions that this would be orchestrated by the government of the Asian giant itself.

On Monday the Japanese embassy in Beijing tightened its security after it was attacked in protest of the Fukushima water spill. (GREG BAKER / AFP /)

The one who also ruled on the matter was Prime Minister Kishida, who condemned both the cases of telephone harassment and the “stone-throwing cases against the Japanese embassy and schools” in China.

Over the weekend, in addition, from the Japanese diplomatic headquarters in Beijing they recommended their citizens not to speak Japanese “too strongdue to the growing hostile sentiment in the country. As of this Monday, the 28th, there is a greater deployment of security agents outside the embassy.

This leads to the question of whether both the calls and the attacks are due to organically generated civil sentiment or if there really is a government order behind the actions. For Professor Carrasco, the actions could respond to a historical rivalry that has been fueled by Beijing’s position on the case.

“On the one hand, no one denies that there may be concern to a certain degree justified in the population. In addition, in people, especially older people who remember the wars between China and Japan, there is still that latent tension about the actions taken by the other party. That could have led to this campaign of harassment or inconvenience of certain companies being carried out. However, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry spoke about the discharge of water and assured that his government opposes it. So, there the government established a position that is different from the rest. While the US, France or Australia support the method and others such as Russia, the Philippines or South Korea have expressed concern, in China there is government opposition. That could have added to social discontent”, says the expert in this regard.

Source: Elcomercio