BEIJING (Reuters) -- Toyota and its dealers are quietly maneuvering
to allay risks from periodic eruptions of anti-Japan sentiment in China,
even as recent sales data suggest a slow but steady recovery for
Japanese automakers since the latest flare-up last year.
China
sales for Toyota Motor Corp. and other Japanese car makers tumbled after
a territorial dispute between Beijing and Tokyo sparked an outbreak of
anti-Japanese protests in September last year.
Trade and
diplomatic ties between Asia's two biggest economies are prone to
sporadic disruptions, a legacy of the lingering bitterness from Japan's
wartime occupation of large parts of northeastern China.
As a
result, some executives at Toyota's China unit are considering the merit
of focusing its sales effort, at least in the shorter term, on southern
China, where anti-Japanese sentiment is historically weaker.
In
the south, sales of Japanese cars have all but recovered to
pre-September levels "as if nothing happened", a senior Toyota executive
in Beijing said.
"Our feeling is why spend money to overcome the bias against Japanese products in northern China?" the executive said.
"We
could get more bang out of that same money by focusing on southern
China where we already have a (relatively) good will towards Toyota and
Lexus."
Asked about such a move, a Toyota spokesman said it was focusing on the quality of it products.
"The
bottom line: the best thing for us as an auto maker to do in China, and
in any market for that matter, is to keep making efforts to come up as
quickly as possible with the kind of cars consumers deem desirable and
want to embrace," Toyota's Beijing-based spokesman, Takanori Yokoi, said
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