How have Chinese officials reacted to the nuclear crisis in Japan?

Q: How have Chinese officials reacted to the nuclear crisis in Japan?

A: Japan on April 12 raised its rating of the Fukushima nuclear crisis to seven (the highest on the United Nations' International Nuclear Events Scale), placing it in the same category as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Japanese officials announced that the leak has so far been a tenth of the radiation emitted from Chernobyl and indicated that radiation levels around the plant are steadily dropping. At a separate news conference, however, an official from the plant's operator, said that the leakage could eventually reach or exceed Chernobyl's levels.

Here is a run-down of the Chinese government's response to the crisis in the past few weeks following the disaster:

Pushing for Transparency from Japan

Chinese officials have publicly pressed Japan to be more transparent about the Fukushima plant's meltdown, and the message was no different on Tuesday when Wen Jiabao asked Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan to "promptly and accurately inform China" about the crisis' developments.

In an editorial, the government-affiliated Global Times on Tuesday criticized the Japanese government for failing to disclose its actions related to the crisis and said the country "owes a serious official apology to neighboring countries." Japan dumped radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean without consulting its neighbors and in the end only notified the United States, the editorial states, amounting to a "cover-up."

No Changes in Long-Term Nuclear Energy Path

In the wake of the Japanese crisis, the State Council announced a halt in approvals for new reactors and plans to launch a thorough inspection of all existing facilities, stating that "safety is our top priority in developing nuclear power plants." In a statement, China's top nuclear power regulatory body, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, also said that relevant agencies are under pressure to keep up with supervising and regulating China's rapidly-growing nuclear energy infrastructure.

New approvals may not restart until 2012, pending new safety codes and a new Atomic Energy Law to be released later this year, according to the Financial Times.

China accounts for 40 percent of new nuclear projects planned globally. The government has made no modifications to its target of 40GW of nuclear capacity by 2015.

Reassuring the Public

Although Japan's raising of the Fukushima crisis to level seven has strengthened comparisons with Chernobyl, China's Ministry of Environmental Protection has rejected the parallel, estimating that the effect of the Fukushima accident on China would amount to 1 percent of Chernobyl's impact.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has also urged citizens to avoid panicking, especially after citizens cleared supermarkets of iodized salt, which they mistakenly believed would protect against radiation. Sina Weibo, China's top Twitter-like online platform, blocked the Chinese characters for "nuclear leak" from its search engine, in order to contain concerns.