"Japan-China relations: as critics cry ‘coercion’ over Fukushima seafood ban, will a WTO complaint do any good?," South China Morning Post, September 6th, 2023.
Excerpt from the South China Morning Post:
""Japan’s threat to lodge a complaint at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over China’s “totally unacceptable” import ban on its seafood is unlikely to do much to resolve a stand-off sparked by the release of treated water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, analysts say.
“If Japan does file a complaint with the WTO, the argument is likely to be that the Chinese claim is unsubstantiated as the radioactivity is below internationally accepted levels for contamination,” said Martin Schulz, chief policy economist at Fujitsu’s Global Market Intelligence Unit.
As the case was “more about politics”, he added, “I don’t think the complaint will have a major impact and solutions will be on other levels.”"
Shortly after China enacted a sweeping ban on Japan's fishing imports, Japan brought their rebuttal to the World Trade Organization. In response, economic analyst Martin Schultz stated that the move on both sides was “more about politics” than the actual quality of goods; a supporting evidentiary piece that suggests that China decided to use the Fukushima incident as a tool of political leverage and virtue signaling against Japan, whose imperial legacy still looms over the region despite normalized relations.