In Guangdong province, on China’s southern coast, a woman posted a photo of a packaged air conditioner from a Japanese brand, which she wanted to return in protest. In southwest China, the owner of a Japanese pub posted a video of him tearing up anime posters and smashing bottles, saying he plans to reopen as a Chinese bistro.
Many social media posts like this have featured the phrase “nuclear-contaminated wastewater” — the same wording used by the Chinese government and state media to refer to Japan’s release into the ocean of treated radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant . .
Even before Japan began pumping out the first tranche of more than a million tons of wastewater last week, China had mounted a coordinated campaign to spread disinformation about the safety of the release, fueling anger and fear among millions of Chinese.
The water spill, 12 years after the nuclear plant was destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami, prompted China to revert to its old playbook of inciting diplomatic chaos with its Asian rival. In 2012, Chinese protesters, apparently accompanied by police, attacked sushi restaurants after Japanese activists landed on an island that both China and Japan claim as their own.
But this time, Beijing may have a broader agenda. As the world order has shifted dramatically, with China and the United States appearing to be increasingly dividing the world into an us-versus-them framework, experts say China is trying to cast doubt on the credibility of Japan and its allies as conspirators of malevolence want to label.
With the United States, the European Union and Australia all backing Japan’s water production, China wants to spread a narrative that Japan and its international partners are “so driven and dominated by geopolitical interests that they wait to compromise fundamental ethical norms and international norms.” and ignore the science,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow in the nuclear policy program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“My concern,” added Mr. Zhao, “is that this widening perception and information gap will make China feel more justified in explicitly questioning existing international narratives, institutions and order.”
Scientists, including Chinese experts invited to serve on an International Atomic Energy Agency task force, have said Japan’s water production would have a very low impact on human health or the environment.
Yet China’s foreign ministry last week denounced Japan’s release of “nuclear-contaminated water” and suspended imports of Japanese seafood, following months of condemnation from the Chinese government and its media companies over Japan’s discharge plan.
Thousands of callers to the China dialing code bombarded municipal offices in Tokyo, more than 150 miles from the Fukushima factory, with harassing messages, shouting, “You idiot!” or “Why are you releasing contaminated water?” in broken Japanese.
According to Logical, a technology start-up that helps governments and businesses counter disinformation, social media posts mentioning Fukushima by Chinese state media, officials or pro-China influencers have increased 15-fold since the start of the year.
The messages have not necessarily spread false information, but omitted crucial details, such as the fact that Japan removes virtually all radioactive material before the water is discharged. They also fail to recognize that Chinese nuclear power plants themselves discharge wastewater with much higher levels of radioactive material than the water coming from Fukushima.
The state-owned China Central Television and China Global Television Network have posted paid advertisements denouncing the release of water in multiple countries and languages, including English, German and Khmer.
Its global reach shows that China is trying to bring more countries to its side in what is often compared to a new Cold War. “The main point is not whether seafood from Japan is safe,” said Hamsini Hariharan, a Chinese expert for Logically. “This is part of China’s attempt to say that the current world order is flawed.”
Chinese intelligence sources have highlighted the early failure of the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operated the Fukushima plant, to report how much of the water had been treated in a powerful filtration system.
According to the energy company’s website, only 30 percent of the approximately 1.3 million tons of water in the storage tanks at the site has been fully treated to the point that only tritium — an isotope of hydrogen that experts say poses a low risk to human health forms – mortal remains. The company, known as Tepco, has said it will not release any water until it has been fully treated.
Tests by various Japanese government agencies and Tepco show that the water released last week contained only low levels of tritium, far below the standard set by the World Health Organization. There is more tritium in water discharged from nuclear power plants in China and South Korea, where protesters have also condemned the Japanese release.
With a monitoring network made up of the International Atomic Energy Agency and experts from numerous countries, “international pressure is very high on the government in Japan,” said Kai Vetter, a professor of nuclear energy at the University of California, Berkeley, who studied the environmental and social impacts of the Fukushima disaster.
Hirokazu Matsuno, cabinet secretary to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, said Monday that Japan “has often made counter-arguments against information, including content that is not factual, released from China.”
Part of the challenge for Japan, where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs uses the hashtag #LetTheScienceTalk on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, is that the science is difficult for the average citizen to understand and people often react emotionally to such events.
“It’s understandable that people are concerned and afraid of something they don’t know well,” said Ittaka Kishida, a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo who studies the sociology and history of nuclear physics. “They just have to rely on what experts explain, even if they haven’t seen it or can’t confirm it with their own eyes.”
The lack of scientific understanding leaves the door open for disinformation, especially through tightly controlled Chinese information channels. In China, where residents have faced food safety concerns for decades, authorities can tap into that vulnerability to manipulate the public and instill fear, says Kyle Walter, chief of research at Logically.
Still, some critics say Japan hasn’t always helped itself. They have questioned whether Tepco can keep its promise to remove most of the radioactive material from the water during the 30 years of the planned release. And they say surrounding countries should have been consulted before Japan announced its decision to release the wastewater.
“China is exaggerating the risk because Japan gave them the opportunity,” said Azby Brown, principal investigator for the environmental monitoring organization Safecast, which has been monitoring radiation levels in Fukushima since the disaster. Because of the “lack of international consultation” at the beginning, he said, “they should have expected China and Korea to have valid questions.”
In China, there has been a flare-up against the government’s propaganda. Liu Su, a science blogger, wrote of a “nationalist narrative” related to the abuses of Japan’s colonial era, in which the country is “forever denied sincere forgiveness and any criticism of Japan considered reasonable and just.” He removed the post from a social media platform after a user reported him to authorities in Shanghai for “inappropriate statements.”
South Korean officials have tried to debunk some of the outlandish claims circulating on social media.
After a photo of a patch of discolored water near the Fukushima factory went viral in South Korea last week, Park Koo-yeon, a government official, described it as fake news, noting that the photo was taken eight minutes before the discharge even started. had been taken. .
Hisako Ueno reported from Tokyo, and Jin Yu Young from Seoul.
