Chinese Officers Delay Visit to Japan Amid Toxic Water Fallout - Reports

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - A Chinese military delegation has postponed a planned visit to Japan this month amid political fallout from the Fukushima wastewater release, Japanese media reported on Tuesday.

Senior Chinese officers were to reciprocate the July visit by a delegation of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, a Japanese news agency cited sources close to the matter as saying.

The visit by members of the People's Liberation Army was initially scheduled for mid- to end September. They were to hold talks with Japanese Defense Ministry officials and visit military installations. A rescheduled trip is not expected until the end of the year, the sources reportedly stressed.

Reciprocal military visits between the two neighbor nations had been on hold for four years due to the coronavirus pandemic. They began in 2001 as a confidence-building measure and were suspended between 2012 and 2018 following a maritime dispute over contested Pacific islands.

In August, tensions heated up again after Japan began to release treated but still nuclear-tainted water into the ocean that had been stored at the defunct Fukushima nuclear plant since it was crippled by a tsunami in 2011. China responded by slapping Japan with a blanket ban on seafood imports.