China’s Ban on Japan’s Seafood Benefits Other Countries, Especially Russia

 

 

 

 

 

 

One year on: Japan continues dumping of nuclear-contaminated wastewater.

Japan's seafood industry continues to suffer one year after China suspended all aquatic product imports from its neighboring country over food safety concerns due to Tokyo's move to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea, while seafood products from other countries have gained significant share in the Chinese market, industry experts said on Sunday. 

 

While Japan has been calling for the removal of the ban, Chinese officials and experts stressed that the move is to protect food safety, and they urged Tokyo to address serious concerns over its dumping of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea. Industry experts said that Japan will continue to miss out on the continuously growing Chinese seafood market.

 

On August 24, 2023 China banned imports of all aquatic products from Japan after Japan, disregarding serious concerns from China and the broader international community, started dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea.

 

Following the move, Japan's seafood exports to China, one of the biggest importers of seafood, plunged, and the Japanese seafood industry was adversely affected. While claiming that Japan's scallop industry has overcome the crisis triggered by the ban, the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, reported on Sunday that inventories of frozen scallops have piled up and warehousing costs have increased losses.

 

Overall, Japan's exports of aquatic products to China, including pearls and coral, plunged from 87.1 billion yen ($592 million) in 2022 to 61 billion yen in 2023 and only 3.5 billion yen in the first half of 2024, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

 

But seafood imports into China from other countries, including Russia, have grown significantly. For example, Russia's exports of seafood to China reached 1.29 million tons at the end of 2023, an all-time high, Russian news agency TASS reported on July 10.