Protests in China over the territorial dispute with Japan are a cause of concern at Japanese car dealers. Protests in Chinese cities over the weekend were the worst flare-up of tensions between the two countries since 2005.
Bloomberg News cited the deputy secretary general of the China Automobile Dealers Association, Luo Lei, as saying: “The impact caused by natural disasters can be fixed quickly, while it takes a longer time and efforts to make hostile sentiment against Japanese cars go away. I have worked at the association for 10 years and this round of losses suffered by Japanese car dealers is the worst I’ve seen.”
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Besides those boycotting Japanese goods, most Chinese citizens will not dare to buy Japanese-brand cars due to concerns over [personal] safety, Luo said. He added the violence may cause more damage to Japanese automakers in China than last year’s natural disasters.
Both Toyota and Honda reported fire damage to dealerships in Qingdao. A Honda Civic was burnt in front of a Shanghai distributor. The demonstrators also handed out a list of Japanese brands to be boycotted.
Honda’s China unit general manager, Natsuno Asanuma, said a dealership in the city of Qingdao was set ablaze by protestors on 15 September. No injuries resulted from the fire. Joichi Tachikawa, a Toyota spokesman, said on 17 September that there were no other reports of major damage in China to its operations besides the fire over the weekend at a dealership, also in Qingdao.
In Guangzhou city, seven suspects were detained for vandalising a Japanese car on 16 September, a public security bureau reported. Police also detained three others for smashing an unidentified store front and another person for destroying two billboards.
Over the weekend, Japanese cars were overturned and windscreens smashed by demonstrators in some cities, Phoenix Television reported.
Klaus Paur, Shanghai-based global head of automotive at researcher Ipsos, said: “The longer the conflict between China and Japan lasts, the more this anti-Japanese sentiment will spread among ordinary consumers. In this politically sensitive situation, Japanese manufacturers have to reduce marketing as well as communication activities which in turn significantly weakens their brands and leaves the field for competitors.”
