Japanese fishermen and aquaculture industry cry

At 1300 hours local time on August 24, the Japanese Government unilaterally and forcibly initiated the discharge of contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear accident into the sea in defiance of the strong doubts and objections of the international community. Tokyo Electric Power Company announced at an interim press conference on the matter that today's discharge of nuclear contaminated water is expected to be 200 to 210 tons, and that daily discharges will be announced the following day. The first sea discharge will be about 460 tons per day for 17 days, for a total of about 7,800 cubic meters of nuclear contaminated water.

On August 22nd, the governments of Hong Kong (Special Topics) and Macao SAR announced that food imports in 10 prefectures and counties in Japan would be banned from August 24th.

The person in charge of Import and Export Food Safety Bureau of the General Administration of Customs said on the 24th that, in order to prevent Japanese food from being contaminated by radioactivity from being exported to China, and to protect the lives and health of the people, the General Administration of Customs has continued to carry out the assessment of the risk of radioactive contamination of food from Japan, and on the basis of strictly ensuring the safety of the imported food from Japan, the General Administration of Customs has taken strengthened regulatory measures.

At the same time, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and other countries have announced that they will take strict testing measures for Japanese food imports.

Japanese media cited Japan Fisheries Agency data show that Japan's total exports of aquatic products in 2022 is about 387 billion yen (2.6 billion U.S. dollars), and in the past few years has been an upward trend. Japanese fish exports to China accounted for about 22.5% of the total, China is its largest exporter, of which scallops, skipjack tuna, tuna is the main export species to China. According to the latest data from the Imperial Data Bank of Japan, at least 700 Japanese companies exporting directly or indirectly to China will be affected by the new measures, and secondary and tertiary traders are also expected to be affected.