China to resume seafood imports from Japan

China has agreed to resume the import of seafood from Japan after a two-year ban over the discharge of wastewater from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea, Tokyo said on Friday.

What do we know about the deal between China and Japan?
The agreement between the two countries was reached in a meeting held in Beijing on Wednesday, Japan's agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi said.

He said the export to China will begin once Beijing takes "necessary procedures," without detailing what those might be.

The agreement is based on China's participation in the water sampling missions as part of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Nikkei newspaper, which reported the news earlier, said that the agreement calls on Japan to register fishery processing facilities with the Chinese authorities.

The agreement also requires inspection and certification of the seafood, confirming the absence of radioactive substances such as caesium-137.

Nikkei also reported that China is expected to officially announce the resumption of exports from areas that lie outside the Fukushima region soon.

Why did China ban the import of seafood from Japan?
In 2023, China stopped importing Japanese seafood over the release of wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea.

It said the released water posed a risk to the fishing industry and coastal communities in eastern China.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant was damaged in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which led to meltdowns in three of its reactors, causing large amounts of radioactive water to accumulate.

Japan started releasing the treated wastewater into the sea in 2023 and said the discharge met international safety standards and data from the IAEA monitoring was publicly available.

But China still decided to halt the import of Japanese seafood at the time.