Chinese students in Australia are pushing to mobilise against recent moves by the Japanese authorities to discharge nuclear wastewater into the ocean.
The action comes after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) suspended imports of Japanese aquatic products on Aug. 24 and began fanning anti-Japanese sentiment.
“[I] really want to do something!! Although it may not be possible to stop Japan from continuing to emit, at least don’t smear us.”
The post has over 200 comments so far, with many from local users in Australia.
“I also want to go. This is the first time I’ve wanted to join a protest from the bottom of my heart. If you can organise please do share,” read another comment.
UN: Japan’s Release Is Safe
The UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded in July (pdf) that the release of radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi power plant was consistent with international safety protocols.After a two-year review of Japan’s plan, the IAEA said that it “concluded that the approach and activities to the discharge of ALPS treated water taken by Japan are consistent with relevant international safety standards
“Furthermore, the IAEA notes the controlled, gradual discharges of the treated water to the sea, as currently planned and assessed by TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment,” said the IAEA in a statement.
South Korea said in a statement that it had no problem with the scientific or technical aspects of the plan but did not necessarily agree with or support it.
The Australian government said it had “confidence in the process that has led to the decision.”
CCP Inciting Hatred Against Japan
After Japan officially discharged the Fukushima nuclear wastewater, official state-owned media in China began going into overdrive.A post by China Central Television had over 150,000 comments mostly denouncing Japan, with some users calling for a “boycott of Japanese goods,” and even for “Japan to disappear.”
At the same time, Beijing News launched a poll on whether Chinese should continue eating Japanese food.
Of the 92,000 netizens who responded, 81,000 said, “I won’t eat anymore. I’m worried about safety.”
On Aug. 25, the official Weibo account of the Japanese Embassy in China posted that unrelated individuals and organisations in Japan have received harassing phone calls from China alleging it was a criminal act.
“If the target of the harassment is a store, it is very likely to cause financial loss; if it is an emergency medical organisation, it is a matter of human life,” read the post.
“We have asked the Chinese authorities to deal with the matter seriously and in accordance with the law.”
Subject to the news reports by Chinese state media, panic-buying of salt began in the coastal provinces of China fearing it may be contaminated by wastewater dumping.
Beijing’s Influence on Overseas Communities
Li Yuanhua, a Sydney-based China expert, believes that Beijing is diverting Chinese people’s dissatisfaction as it struggles to solve problems domestically.“The economy [of China] is on the brink of collapse right now, with so high an unemployment rate, and the flood … Now a new round of pandemic comes again,” he told The Epoch Times.
“It needs to find an outlet for Chinese people to air their concerns, so the anti-Japanese card is often played.”
Mr Li, a former professor at China’s Capital Normal University, said CCP manipulation is usually behind overseas protests.
Mr. Li explained that some staff in Chinese embassies and consulates have direct contact with pro-Beijing Chinese students at universities in Australia.
“In some places, they can successfully organise [such protests], while in some other places, they can’t get enough people and fail to do so,” he said.
“They haven’t seen or thought logically about why only those few socialist brother countries around the world have banned the import of Japanese seafood,” he told The Epoch Times.
“The sad thing is international students who wants to exercise their basic rights are still self-censoring, not even daring to type out the word ‘protest’ in full online, but only using [Chinese] phonetic alphabet instead,” he added.
Beijing’s Own Wastewater Discharge Not Scrutinised
Meanwhile, Beijing has also been accused of hypocrisy as it releases nuclear wastewater into the ocean itself.
“The water release [of Japan] is designed to have seven times less tritium per litre than is recommended for drinking water by the World Health Organization," said David Krofcheck, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland.
“Much more tritium has been released by normally operating nuclear power plants into the north Pacific Ocean since those plants in China, South Korea, and Taiwan, were first located on coastal sites.”
