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.
‘DANGEROUS GAME’: Legislative Yuan budget cuts have already become a point of discussion for Democrats and Republicans in Washington, Elbridge Colby said Taiwan’s fall to China “would be a disaster for American interests” and Taipei must raise defense spending to deter Beijing, US President Donald Trump’s pick to lead Pentagon policy, Elbridge Colby, said on Tuesday during his US Senate confirmation hearing. The nominee for US undersecretary of defense for policy told the Armed Services Committee that Washington needs to motivate Taiwan to avoid a conflict with China and that he is “profoundly disturbed” about its perceived reluctance to raise defense spending closer to 10 percent of GDP. Colby, a China hawk who also served in the Pentagon in Trump’s first team,
SEPARATE: The MAC rebutted Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is China’s province, asserting that UN Resolution 2758 neither mentions Taiwan nor grants the PRC authority over it The “status quo” of democratic Taiwan and autocratic China not belonging to each other has long been recognized by the international community, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday in its rebuttal of Beijing’s claim that Taiwan can only be represented in the UN as “Taiwan, Province of China.” Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) yesterday at a news conference of the third session at the 14th National People’s Congress said that Taiwan can only be referred to as “Taiwan, Province of China” at the UN. Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory, which is not only history but
CROSSED A LINE: While entertainers working in China have made pro-China statements before, this time it seriously affected the nation’s security and interests, a source said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) late on Saturday night condemned the comments of Taiwanese entertainers who reposted Chinese statements denigrating Taiwan’s sovereignty. The nation’s cross-strait affairs authority issued the statement after several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑), Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜) and Michelle Chen (陳妍希), on Friday and Saturday shared on their respective Sina Weibo (微博) accounts a post by state broadcaster China Central Television. The post showed an image of a map of Taiwan along with the five stars of the Chinese flag, and the message: “Taiwan is never a country. It never was and never will be.” The post followed remarks
INVESTMENT WATCH: The US activity would not affect the firm’s investment in Taiwan, where 11 production lines would likely be completed this year, C.C. Wei said Investments by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) in the US should not be a cause for concern, but rather seen as the moment that the company and Taiwan stepped into the global spotlight, President William Lai (賴清德) told a news conference at the Presidential Office in Taipei yesterday alongside TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家). Wei and US President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday announced plans to invest US$100 billion in the US to build three advanced foundries, two packaging plants, and a research and development center, after Trump threatened to slap tariffs on chips made
RSS