News U.S. military to purchase Japanese seafood to counter China ban

For the first time, the U.S. military in Japan is sourcing its seafood from local suppliers after China stopped buying such products from Japan. China's ban came after Japan released water treated from its damaged Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean. U.S. ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel told Reuters on Monday that this initiative was a way to support Japan against China's "economic wars". He also said that the U.S. should explore other ways to help Japan cope with losing its biggest seafood customer, who claims to have food safety concerns.

"It's going to be a long-term contract between the U.S. armed forces and the fisheries and co-ops here in Japan," Emanuel said. "The best way we have proven in all the instances to kind of wear out China's economic coercion is come to the aid and assistance of the targeted country or industry," he said. The first purchase involves just shy of a metric ton of scallops, a tiny fraction of more than 100,000 tons of scallops that Japan exported to mainland China last year. Emanuel said the purchases - which will feed soldiers in messes and aboard vessels as well as being sold in shops and restaurants on military bases - will increase over time to all types of seafood. The U.S. military had not previously bought local seafood in Japan, he said. The U.S. could also look at its overall fish imports from Japan and China, he said. The U.S. is also in talks with Japanese authorities to help direct locally caught scallops to U.S.-registered processors.

Click to expand...

Rahm claimed that China was facing serious economic problems worsened by a leadership that rejected international systems. "They are harming the future of China's youth. You have a situation where one in three Chinese youth are out of work. You have major cities with incomplete housing, and you have major municipalities unable to pay city workers. Why? Because China made a political choice to turn away from a system that was benefiting them." The last official youth unemployment data from China, released in July before Beijing announced it was stopping publishing the numbers, showed it rising to a record high of 21.3%.