On the same day Japan began wastewater releases from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in late August 2023, the website of China’s customs agency announced the country would “completely suspend the import of aquatic products originating from Japan.”

Both the official ban and a public wariness of Japanese seafood led Chinese citizens to find creative solutions to satisfy their sushi cravings. Cantonese dim sum-style sushi—using local ingredients such as chicken feet, barbeque pork, beef, mapo tofu—popped up in restaurants across Guangdong. The hashtag “Cantonese people have their own sushi” trended on Weibo in late August. This latest Chinese act of economic coercion began over allegations of health hazards but the boycott was driven more by the political fallout of great power rivalry in East Asia. 

Radioactive Water and the Least-Worst Solution

The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster which struck northern Japan on March 11, 2011 killed more than 2,000 people. These events also displaced over 200,000 from the Fukushima area when the nearby Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Daiichi nuclear power plant melted down. 

The water used to cool the three radioactive cores has been stored in over 1,000 large on-site tanks. Since the storage is now full, however, TEPCO came up with a system to filter out the most dangerous radionuclides from the water, such as Cesium-137. All of the dangerous radionuclides that is, except tritium. This radioactive isotope of hydrogen is produced in normal nuclear power reactors around the world, including Chinese reactors. 

Japanese researchers developed a processing system to mix and dilute the tritiated water to “drinkable standards.” In April 2021, Japan’s government announced a proposal to discharge water treated in this way into the Pacific Ocean. The proposal calls for discharges to be done over a 30-year period, but it was met with opposition both inside and outside of Japan— including extensive negative reporting by Chinese media that focused heavily on Korean opposition. 

Japan’s fisheries ministry has been testing fish caught in Fukushima-adjacent waters daily to build confidence in its safety. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has examined and approved the processing system—and it is also testing fish from Fukushima for radiation. Thus far, IAEA tests of the water have found levels of tritium far below the World Health Organization’s limit for human consumption, stating the discharges “will have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.”

Eggs, Rocks, and Bans

When the discharge process finally began, Chinese reactions came swiftly. Harassing phone calls to government offices in Fukushima were made from Chinese phone numbers, online postings criticized Japanese businesses, and eggs and rocks were thrown at Japanese schools in Qingdao and Suzhou.  China has also recruited Russia and Hong Kong authorities to ban Japanese fish. 

China has used “popular” boycotts to express outrage to Japan before. But the controversy over the Fukushima proposal meant that this official boycott targeting Japanese fish had just enough veneer of logic to trigger misinformed Chinese consumers to react just as the government wanted—with outrage, criticism, and protests. 

So is seafood from Japan dangerous to eat? Hardly. Japan’s track record has been fairly good, compared to other fish exporters in Asia, with only 1.45% of the total global rejections in the years 2016 to 2022. Over the same time period, Chinese fish made up almost 11% of all border rejections due to reasons ranging from bacterial contamination, poor temperature control, chemicals, and incorrect labeling. The most common reason for refusal is “Unfit for human consumption.”

Fish Fight or Fist Fight?

China’s fish boycott has more to do with geopolitics than with tritium levels in sushi. There has been growing Japanese concern about China’s aggression toward Taiwan. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine found nary a critical word from Beijing. These factors have jolted the Japanese government into taking several strategic measures, including increasing defense spending, tightening strategic cooperation with the United States, and boosting Tokyo’s “unofficial” relations with Taipei. 

Indeed, strategic relations between the US and Japan are closer than at any time since 1952. Prime Minister Kishida’s recent talks with President Biden have reinforced this sense of cooperation and solidarity. The trilateral Camp David meeting held between President Joseph Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on August 18, 2023 further augmented the western alliance in East Asia. 

Despite the strengthened trilateral relations, Koreans did vigorously protest Japan’s discharge proposal. Chinese officials have sought to use this spectacle to further drive a wedge into the delicate Japan-Korea relationship.

Boycotts as Political Performance 

This is not the first time that China has used economic boycotts against Japan—or taken out its foreign policy fury on fish. 

When the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee awarded its prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010, China froze relations and boycotted Norwegian salmon. Previous Chinese government-orchestrated boycotts of Japanese products in 1985, 2001, 2005, and 2010 also started with much publicized protests and shunning of Japanese products, but previous trade levels quietly resumed within a few months. (Only the 2012 boycott over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute seemed to permanently dent Japanese exports.) 

China’s Fukushima boycott may be different. First, unlike previous “popular” boycotts, this is a customs ban. One tangible result is that China’s imports of Japanese fish were down 99% by October. This is a big economic hit for Japan, especially since China is the largest importer of its seafood—buying $433 million worth of Japanese fish in 2021. (China also notably exports much more fish to Japan, with a value of $3.8 billion a year) The United States even stepped into the dispute by buying Japanese seafood for consumption on US military bases in Japan, albeit ordering only a token amount initially. 

Yet Chinese leaders must walk a fine line on this boycott and the underlying geopolitics behind it. The attempt to break the fledgling ROK-Japan relationship via a radiation wedge has been ineffective, and it has worsened Beijing’s relationship with both countries. 

To mend fences with Seoul and Tokyo, the Xi administration has agreed recently to hold a China-Japan-ROK summit meeting early in 2024. China’s government also needs to be wary of leaning too heavily into the radiation issue as it is building 22 new reactors for power generation in addition to the 55 it already has in operation. One small accident at any one of them could see China’s own hyperbole on Fukushima turned against itself.