China's ties with Japan have spiraled over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's remarks, but President Xi Jinping is taking a more measured approach.
Despite the dispute, Japanese brands such as Uniqlo, Muji, and Sushiro are still popular in China, with some even seeing an increase in business.
Chinese authorities have avoided stoking public anger, with officials discouraging travel to Japan and limiting seafood imports, but not inciting widespread boycotts of Japanese products.
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Asia’s top economies might be at loggerheads on the world stage, but for China’s 1.4 billion shoppers it’s largely business as normal. That’s because while Communist Party officials have discouraged travel to Japan, limited seafood imports and canceled some Japanese concerts and films, authorities have avoided stoking public anger to a level beyond their control.
It marks an evolution in China’s economic coercion playbook as leaders calibrate their retaliation to avoid denting already weak consumer spending at home or stirring up hard-to-contain social unrest.
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“Inciting public anger could lead to unpredictable outcomes that would potentially be difficult for the government to manage,” said Jeremy Chan, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group and a former US diplomat in China and Japan. “Japanese foods and products remain immensely popular in China,” he added, calling the dispute over Takaichi’s comments “abstract” to the general public.
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China: Xi Reins in Nationalism as Chinese Consumers Embrace Japan Goods
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/china-keeps-buying-sushi-japan-s-cars-as-xi-keeps-spat-in-checkcross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47160442