Beijing has fined and issued a warning to 7-Eleven over its website listing Taiwan as a country and displaying maps it said contained erroneous borders for Xinjiang and Tibet.
The Beijing municipal government fined the company 50,000 yuan ($7,842) for the “errors” including “wrongful act of assigning Taiwan province as an independent country”.
It said the 7-Eleven website also failed to use China’s names for some disputed islands in the South China Sea, including the Japanese-administered Senkakus which China calls the Diaoyu islands.
The punishment was issued in December, but surfaced in the media on Friday.
The convenience store chain is prolific across Asia, and the Beijing stores are owned by a domestic outpost of Seven-Eleven Japan, a subsidiary of Japanese firm 7 & i Holdings.
The Chinese government claims Taiwan as a province and is hypersensitive to any act or reference which appears to support Taiwan’s position that it is a sovereign nation.