Toyota to cut Tianjin plant output next week as China sales fall: Nikkei

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) will idle production lines next week at its plant in Tianjin, northern China, due to weak demand for its cars in China amid anti-Japanese sentiment triggered by a territorial row, Japan's Nikkei newspaper said on Tuesday.

Toyota, which plans to halve its overall October output in China compared with a year earlier, may make deeper cuts in the coming months, the paper also said.

Two of the Tianjin plant's three lines will shut down for one week starting October 22, affecting output of sedans such as the Crown and the Reiz. The third line, which makes models such as the Vios subcompact, will be halted for two days, on October 22 and October 26, the paper said. The Tianjin plant produced 500,000 cars in 2011, it said.

Protests and calls for boycotts of Japanese products broke out across China in September after Japan nationalized two of a group of disputed East China Sea islands, known as the Diaoyu in Chinese and the Senkaku in Japanese, by purchasing them from their private owners.

In September, Toyota's sales in China fell 48.9 percent from a year earlier, while Honda Motor Co's (7267.T) sales in the country dropped 40.5 percent.

(Reporting by Mayumi Negishi; Editing by Chris Gallagher)