People seen outside T&T Supermarket's newest location in Richmond, B.C., Aug. 21, 2018.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
A Canadian supermarket chain is facing a backlash within the Chinese community over an advertising campaign featuring a map of China that doesn’t include Taiwan, the latest major company to find itself in hot water over Chinese territorial issues.
T&T Supermarket, Canada’s largest Asian food retailer, launched a two-week campaign last month in its stores in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta to promote Chinese delicacies. The campaign depicted a map of China that didn’t include Taiwan.
Although the campaign is no longer running in stores, it has sparked heated discussion on several major Chinese-language websites.
Zhongjun Huang, who saw the campaign in a T&T store in Ontario, posted pictures of the advertisement on China’s Twitter-like microblogging site, Weibo, complaining it was inappropriate for the retailer – which mainly caters to customers in the Chinese community – to use a map that omitted Taiwan.
Mr. Huang said in an interview he tried to contact the staff of the company, hoping to have them admit the map had “a mistake.”
Self-governing Taiwan is regarded by Beijing as a wayward province. The island is where defeated Nationalist forces retreated in 1949 after they lost the Chinese civil war on the mainland to Mao Zedong’s Communists.
In a statement to The Globe and Mail, the Chinese embassy in Canada urged the retailer to correct its campaign.
“There is but one China in the world and Taiwan is part of Chinese territory. This is common sense in the international community, which the T&T should not be unaware of."
Chinese embassy spokesman Yang Yundong went on to say the embassy hopes the supermarket "corrects the mistake as soon as possible lest it lets down the trust of Canadian Chinese consumers.”
The supermarket chain, which is owned by Loblaw Cos. Ltd., declined comment, saying the company does not take political positions.
“Being one of the retailers in Canada, T&T Supermarket is fully dedicated to serve the Canadian families and the community. We do not have any standpoints that are related to any religious or political matters whatsoever,” Paul Wong, marketing manager for T&T Supermarket’s western region, said in an e-mail.
But Mr. Wong noted the company has been running this campaign annually at all its stores for three years and this is the first time it has encountered this criticism.
But not all of T&T's shoppers were offended. Echo Xu, who lives in Ontario, said some people are too sensitive.
A weigh station for fresh produce at T&T Supermarket in Richmond, B.C., Aug. 21, 2018.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
“Here, many people don’t think Taiwan is part of China and I think it’s important to respect each other’s value,” she said.
As Beijing becomes increasingly assertive about its claims to Taiwan, other companies have become ensnared in the controversy.
Earlier this year, U.S. retailer Gap Inc. apologized to China after an image of a T-shirt on sale went viral. The shirt portrayed a map of China that didn’t include Taiwan, southern Tibet and the South China Sea. After the image ignited huge debate on Chinese social media, Gap issued a statement on Weibo, saying the company respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China and those T-shirts “mistakenly failed to reflect the correct map of China.”
In May, Air Canada joined the growing list of air carriers yielding to Beijing’s pressure to designate Taiwan as part of China. The Chinese government applauded the airline’s decision, but it sparked outrage in the Taiwanese community in Canada.
Charles Chang, a former president of the Taiwan Chamber of Commerce in B.C., said the increasing pressure from Beijing has put many businesses in a dilemma.
“If [the issue] keeps going on, it’ll be very difficult for many companies because if they favour one side, they will upset the other,” he said.
“As businessmen, we don’t want to upset our clients and want to do business with everyone.”