By JOHN HAYWARD
The municipal government of Beijing slapped the 7-Eleven convenience store chain with an ominous warning and roughly $23,500 in fines for violating Chinese Communist Party speech codes, including such âerrorsâ as the âwrongful act of assigning Taiwan province as an independent countryâ and using Japanese names for disputed islands claimed by China.
The fines were assessed in December but not made public until a report by Nikkei Asia on Friday.
The roughly 260 7-Eleven stores in Beijing are run by a unit of Japanese retail company Seven & i Holdings. Beijing officials punished the company for referring to the âSenkaku Islandsâ by their Japanese name on its website. The islands are administered by Japan but claimed by China, which insists on calling them the âDiaoyu Islands.â
7-Elevenâs website allegedly also included âmistakesâ in its representation of the borders for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, home of the brutally oppressed Uyghur Muslims, and the Tibet Autonomous Region. According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the âmistakesâ in the Tibetan borders involved territory disputed by China and India.