Chinese consumers ignore high cost to buy up Japanese rice

BEIJING (Kyodo) The first batch of Japanese rice to hit store shelves in Beijing in four years sold out in less than a month, despite a price tag 20 times higher than domestic fare, stores reported Monday.

A customer puts bags of Japanese rice into his shopping cart at a supermarket in Beijing on July 26, the day the rice went on sale in China. KYODO PHOTO

A total of 4,000 2-kg bags of two top Japanese brands went on sale in Beijing on July 26 after China lifted its ban on rice from Japan.

"They were more popular than we had initially thought they would be," said an official at a Beijing outlet of Ito-Yokado Co., a major Japanese supermarket chain.

In addition to Ito-Yokado outlets, a Taiwanese-owned department store sold the rice in Beijing.

Koshihikari produced in Niigata Prefecture was sold for 198 yuan (about ¥3,200) a bag, while Hitomebore produced in Miyagi Prefecture was priced at 188 yuan, 10 times the price of high-quality Chinese-grown brand-name rice and 20 times that of normal-quality rice.

A total of 20 tons of Japanese rice went on sale in Beijing and Shanghai on July 26.

Japanese officials have said the imported rice is targeted at consumers in the high-income bracket in China, which consumes about 130 million tons of rice a year.

China imposed the import ban in 2003, saying it feared that rice shipments from Japan may bring new pests into the country.

An agreement to lift the ban was reached during Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Japan in April, against the background of an improvement in relations between the two countries since late last year.