The impact of China's one-year ban on fresh produce imports from Japan

The International Atomic Energy Agency later announced on October 15 that Japan will launch the tenth nuclear wastewater discharge into the sea since last year on October 17, and plans to discharge about 7,800 tons by November 4. According to the agreement between the IAEA and Japan, a new round of seawater collection around the Fukushima nuclear power plant will also begin.

Before the ban on importing aquatic products from Japan, the northern city I visited used to import a large number of scallops from Japan every year, with an annual import volume of tens of thousands of tons. In 2022, Japan's scallop exports to China reached 48.9 billion yen, ranking first among all fresh products exported to China. However, such a large import volume is not used for domestic consumption, but to remove the scallop meat and package it before exporting it to Europe and the United States and other countries, because these countries do not allow the import of shelled scallops. Therefore, there are quite a number of companies and workers in the city who are engaged in this work.

After the complete ban on imports in September 2023, the industry in this area in the city is naturally in a state of suspension. The manufacturers did not expect that the import of seafood products from all of Japan would be banned, because the production area of ​​Japanese scallops is mainly in northern Hokkaido. Most people think that the ban will only ban the import of fresh products around Fukushima. Even if the scope is expanded, it will only be the Honshu Island area of ​​Japan. Unexpectedly, the entire Japanese local fresh products are completely banned.

Of course, for high-end Japanese fresh products consumed in China, because the profit is higher, smart Chinese people will definitely find a suitable way. Anyway, the number of high-end seafood and beef imported from Thailand and Kazakhstan has increased significantly in the past two years.

The scallop industry is not like other high-end fresh products produced in Japan. It is a labor-intensive processing business and is extremely sensitive to costs, so it cannot take a roundabout way.

Of course, Japan will not sit idly by, so the government provided 100.7 billion yen in government subsidies to the scallop industry and asked the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) to look for new solutions overseas.

So Southeast Asia and Mexico got this business like pie in the sky. As of July 2024, Japan's scallop exports in 2024 have exceeded the exports before the ban, reaching 6,465 tons, a year-on-year increase of 2%. Among them, the shelled scallops exported to Vietnam and Thailand reached 3,360 tons and 1,242 tons respectively.

Mexico is adjacent to the United States, and the main scallop distribution market in the United States is in Los Angeles. It only takes 4-5 hours to transport from Mexico to Los Angeles by land, so the scallops processed by Mexico can be shipped directly in a fresh-frozen manner after shelling.

We have gotten rid of our dependence on Japanese products and expanded our domestic circulation, which is not a bad thing. From this perspective, we have won again.