China said on Friday that it would gradually resume imports of seafood from Japan, a year after banning them in response to Japan’s release of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean.
The announcement came after the countries reached an agreement to expand monitoring of the treated water, which Japan began discharging in August of last year. The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operated the Fukushima plant and is overseeing its cleanup, have assured the public that the water is safe for human consumption.
China was the most outspoken of several Asia-Pacific countries that objected to the release of the water, citing fears that it could contaminate seafood, though most scientists have dismissed such concerns. The water had been used to cool the nuclear fuel rods destroyed in 2011 when the Fukushima plant, on Japan’s east coast, melted down after a devastating earthquake and tsunami.
Tepco, as the power company is known, has said that it runs the water through a treatment plant to remove most of the radioactive material from it, and that what remains does not exceed international safety standards.
But Beijing has continued to refer to it as “nuclear-contaminated water,” doing so again in its statement on Friday. It has spread disinformation about the safety of the discharge, stoking fear, anger and anti-Japanese sentiment.
On Friday, the two countries announced that they had agreed to expanded monitoring of the treated wastewater under guidelines set by the International Atomic Energy Agency, with the participation of experts from countries including China.
Beijing said it planned to “gradually” restart imports of Japanese seafood that met its safety standards. But it continued to criticize what it called Japan’s “irresponsible practice.”
Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that Beijing was still opposed to Japan’s “unauthorized discharge into the sea,” but that the agreement would ensure that Japan would “earnestly fulfill its obligation under international law.”
In a statement, Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, said that Japan welcomed the additional monitoring.
China was the biggest importer of Japanese seafood in 2022, accounting for about 23 percent of all exports, worth roughly $600 million, according to Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
China’s announcement that it would lift the ban comes at a time of heightened tension between the two countries, further strained this week when a 10-year-old Japanese boy was fatally stabbed on his way to school in Shenzhen, a city in southern China.
Chinese officials have called the killing, which happened outside a school for Japanese children, an isolated incident perpetrated by a 44-year-old “thug,” according to a Chinese Communist Party newspaper. But it came two months after a man stabbed a Japanese woman and her son in eastern China, then killed a Chinese woman who tried to stop him.
On Thursday, Mr. Kishida called the attack on the boy in Shenzhen “an extremely despicable crime” and urged China to do more to protect Japanese people in the country.
Ms. Mao, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said the timing of the announcement about the seafood ban was unrelated to the boy’s killing. China said it had engaged in more than 10 rounds of negotiations with Japan and various organizations to reach the agreement.
Tepco says it has released more than 60,000 tons of treated wastewater from the Fukushima plant, in a series of eight discharges. That is less than 5 percent of the 1.3 million tons of treated water sitting in tanks at the decommissioned facility. It may take 30 to 40 years to release all the wastewater, Japanese news outlets have estimated.
Before the discharges started last year, the I.A.E.A. sent a team to Fukushima with experts from 11 countries, including China and the United States. They published a report in July last year that said Japan’s plan met international safety standards.
Since then, the agency has set up an office at the site to independently analyze the treated water before release and to test seawater near the plant. Two months ago, the I.A.E.A. said the wastewater discharge continued to comply with safety standards.
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