Chinese dispute dents Toyota and Nissan Toyota and Nissan, Japan's top two car companies by revenues, sold more than 100,000 fewer cars in China last year than in 2011, as territorial tensions between Asia's two largest economies escalated into riots and a consumer backlash. The figures, published on Monday, mark the first time that either company has logged a decrease in sales in China, the world's largest car market, since they set up joint ventures with local partners in 2003. Toyota said its new car sales in China slipped 4.9 per cent last year from 2011 to 840,500 units, while Nissan posted a 5.3 per cent fall to 1.18m units. Japan's carmakers have increased discounts and spent more on advertising to lure back Chinese customers after protests broke out in major cities in September, triggered by Tokyo's decision effectively to nationalise an uninhabited chain of islands also claimed by Beijing. Such promotional activities led to monthly sales in China gradually rising between October and December, following a drop of about 40 per cent across the industry in September from a year earlier. However, the lingering anti-Japan sentiment is evident in the companies" sales forecasts for 2013. Toyota, for example, is aiming to sell 900,000 cars in China this year - well down on its original 1m-plus target. "In the short term, the carmakers don't care much about profitability," said Kochi Sugimoto, an analyst at BNP Paribas in Tokyo. More important is that sales patterns go back to normal. Sales of other Japanese-branded products have dipped in China since the disturbances. Shiseido, the cosmetics maker, and Tamasu, the world's biggest manufacturer of table tennis equipment, say that their outlook has dimmed. In a survey of about 1,000 Chinese consumers published on Saturday by Kyodo News, two-thirds of respondents said they had refrained from buying Japanese products since diplomatic relations deteriorated. But it is the carmakers that have suffered the greatest damage. Mazda Motor reported last week that its 2012 sales in China fell by 13 per cent from 2011 to 187,087 cars. Honda also said on Monday that its China sales dropped by 3.1 per cent to 598,576. According to estimates by IHS Automotive, an industry researcher, lost production for the Japanese carmakers in China could amount to 350,000 units in 2013 and 300,000 units in 2014, if tensions do not abate. Before the boycott, Toyota sold about one in 10 of its cars in China, compared with one in four for Nissan. "We experienced a change in demand in the second half of last year, and we adjusted production accordingly," said Toyota.