Tokyo has urged Beijing to “ensure the safety of Japanese residents in China” after a wave of telephone harassment targeting businesses in Japan sparked by the controversial discharge of treated wastewater from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
While Japan says that the release of the treated water is safe — a view backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency — China has staunchly opposed it and banned all Japanese seafood imports, saying it contaminates the ocean.
The Japanese government yesterday published new data showing waters off Fukushima continued to post radioactivity levels well within safe limits.
Photo: Reuters
Calls from China began flooding Japanese businesses from Thursday, when Tokyo Electric Power Co Holdings (TEPCO) started releasing water used to cool the stricken nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Japanese businesses and groups, ranging from a concert hall in Tokyo to an aquarium in northern Iwate, reported that they had started receiving so many calls from Chinese speakers that they had difficulty conducting normal operations.
Japanese Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau Director-General Hiroyuki Namazu voiced his regret about the calls and told senior officials at the Chinese embassy in Tokyo to call for calm in China, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late on Saturday.
Similar incidents have also occurred in China against Japanese facilities, Namazu told Chinese embassy officials, the statement said.
“We strongly urge the Chinese government to take appropriate measures, such as calling on its citizens to act calmly, and to take all possible measures to ensure the safety of Japanese residents in China and Japanese diplomatic missions in China,” the statement quoted him as saying.
Tokyo’s embassy in Beijing has separately urged its nationals in China to refrain from speaking loudly in Japanese.
A Fukushima businessperson told Kyodo News that his four restaurants and pastry shops received about 1,000 calls on Friday, mostly from China.
His businesses had to unplug their phones, Kyodo said.
Fukushima Mayor Hiroshi Kohata on Saturday wrote on Facebook that the city hall had received about 200 similar calls in two days, while local schools, restaurants and hotels also became targets.
“I will report this to the Japanese government and demand action,” he wrote in his post.
The Japanese Ministry of the Environment yesterday said that a fresh test of Fukushima coastal water showed no elevated levels of tritium.
The ministry added that the water samples did not show signs of gamma radiation that can come from other radioactive materials such as caesium.
TEPCO is releasing more than 500 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of wastewater used to cool Fukushima’s damaged reactors, three of which went into meltdown in March 2011 when they were hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
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