Photo/Illutration Salt shelves are empty at a supermarket in Beijing on Aug. 25. (The Asahi Shimbun)

Citizens have every right to express their concerns over safety and health issues related to Japan’s release of treated water from a crippled nuclear power plant.

They should also be allowed to make legitimate and reasonable protests.

What some Chinese are doing now, however, is simply harassment targeting innocent and unrelated Japanese citizens and institutions. The Chinese government has the responsibility to calm the situation.

Japan, for its part, needs to respond calmly and tenaciously call for dialogue with China.

As soon as Japan started releasing treated radioactive water from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant into the ocean on Aug. 24, restaurants in Fukushima Prefecture and public facilities in Tokyo began to receive floods of harassing phone calls from China.

Many videos of Chinese making phone calls to Japan were also posted on social media.

In addition, rocks and eggs were thrown into the premises of Japanese schools in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, and Qingdao, Shandong province.

The Chinese government has been strongly opposed to the release of the water, saying that it is “an extremely selfish act that ignores the international public interest.”

Beijing has imposed an import ban on all seafood from Japan without showing sufficient grounds. It seems that the acts of harassment have been in response to these actions of the government.

In China, not only phone calls but also social media posts are under government surveillance, and posts deemed inappropriate are immediately deleted and could even lead to the detention of the authors of the posts by police.

The flurry of malicious phone calls and social media posts that would normally have become targets of crackdowns indicate that the authorities have condoned them.

It is understandable that the Chinese public could be concerned about the discharge of the treated water into the ocean.

Editorials in The Asahi Shimbun have pointed out that the Japanese government and TEPCO bear the heavy responsibility to ensure the safety of the measure and deal with harmful rumors related to the step.

The editorials also called on them to offer convincing explanations and engage in serious dialogue both at home and abroad.

On the other hand, Beijing has acted in an extremely irresponsible manner by not only refusing to engage in science-based discussions with Tokyo but also trying to fuel anxiety at home while failing to provide accurate information to the domestic audience.

Chinese consumers have snapped up sea salt at domestic supermarkets. This can be blamed on confusion caused by their inaccessibility to accurate information.

All these developments are reminiscent of the waves of anti-Japanese demonstrations that swept China in 2005, 2010 and 2012. At those times, the Chinese authorities were also slow to respond, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry even saying, “We can understand the indignation of the public.”

This attitude only helped expand the damage caused by rock throwing and arson by protesters.

Many of the acts of harassment perpetrated in the past days seem to be aimed mainly at increasing the numbers of views on posts for profits. They are different from previous anti-Japanese behavior in China in some respects.

There are, however, social and economic backgrounds that could make the latest surge in anti-Japanese activities more dangerous. Due to the stagnation of the Chinese economy, unemployment rates among young Chinese have been at serious levels hovering in the 20 percent range.

There is a major risk that Japan could become the main target of pent-up frustration among Chinese youth.

It should be remembered that people who commit such malicious acts represent only a fraction of the Chinese population.

Many Chinese people live normal lives in Japan while legions of Chinese enjoy traveling in Japan. Japanese should never commit acts of hate or abuse against these Chinese out of anger against China.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 29

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