China's strong rebuke of the release of treated Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific Ocean this week has caused bad blood, stoked accusations of misinformation and hypocrisy, and led to some suggesting Beijing is capitalizing on the event to help stir up broader geopolitical tensions with Japan.
Tensions began ramping up Thursday after Japan began the release of treated wastewater from its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean — a plan that was subject to years of scrutiny from the Japanese government, utility providers, and the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, which have cleared the treated water as safe for release.
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But their approvals did little to assuage Beijing. In response, China announced an immediate ban on all aquatic and seafood imports from Japan, citing the “risk of radioactive contamination” from the treated water.
The release was "selfish and irresponsible," Chinese officials said in a statement, adding that the ocean “belongs to all humanity."
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida asked China to immediately lift the ban, and reiterated his country’s strong request “that the Chinese government carry out a scientific discussion."
Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric Power Company President Tomoaki Kobayakawa pledged to do his “utmost” to provide scientific assessments of the release in order to lift the ban, noting China's status as the top importer of Japanese goods.
Though the decision will have economic impacts for Japan, which exports the majority of its seafood to China, roughly $600 million per year, analysts say the decision is more politically motivated.
"I would think there is the baseline level of suspicion that the People's Republic of China holds for Japan to begin, so they are likely to read Japanese actions more negatively,” Chong Ja Ian, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, told a local news outlet.
"Then there is the continuing effort to paint Japan as a negative force regionally and internationally. This seems part of the features of PRC-Japan rivalry, which is of course entangled with PRC-U.S. competition, given Tokyo’s close alliance relationship with Washington.”
Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at Australian National University, agreed, telling Reuters he sees China’s response as a “convenient” tool to rally society and help rebuild waning nationalist sentiment in Beijing.
"The China-Japan thaw will have to wait,” he said. "Now that Japan and South Korea are able to put down their differences to form regular trilateral talks with the United States, China is in no hurry to break the ice with Japan.”
Sung was referring to a trilateral summit between the U.S., Japan, and South Korea held at Camp David earlier this month, which angered the Chinese.
Separate from the underlying geopolitical issues, some were quick to point out that China’s Fuqing power plant in Fujian province releases roughly three times as much tritium into the Pacific than Fukushima, something officials in Beijing have tried to play down in recent days.
“There is a fundamental difference between the nuclear-contaminated water that came into direct contact with the melted reactor cores in the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the water released by nuclear power plants in normal operation,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, said Wednesday.
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“They are different in nature, come from different sources, and require different levels of sophistication to handle," he added.