Amazon’s bid to mute criticism in China, let’s now talk about amazon it is the world’s go-to marketplace for anything, and everything but a crucial part of its business is ratings and reviews it is a major way of engaging shoppers but what happens, when there are no reviews this is the case in china about two years ago
amazon was marketing a collection of president xi jinping’s speeches, and writings this was on its chinese website.
but beijing had a command for them anything less than five stars was unacceptable apparently a negative review had prompted this demand. so what did amazon do according to a reuters investigation they gave in to beijing’s demands currently on its chinese site that is amazon. cn the government published book has no customer reviews or any ratings whatsoever the comments section also remains disabled. amazon’s compliance with china’s demands,
is not new in fact this is a part of a deeper decade-long effort amazon wants to win beijing’s favor in a bid to grow its business in one of the world’s largest marketplaces in an internal 2018. amazon briefing document amazon described what operating in china looked like it said and i quote ideological control and propaganda is the core of the toolkit for the communist party to achieve,
and maintain its success we are not making judgment on whether it is right or wrong. so what amazon did to thrive was help the communist party this was by furthering its global economic and political agenda a core element of this strategy was a project called china books. amazon partnered with an arm of china’s propaganda apparatus for this the plan was to create a selling portal on its u.s site that is amazon.com. the venture offered more than 90 000 publications for sale it includes chinese language textbooks cookbooks and children’s bedtime stories.
but they also include titles that promote the communist party’s official line one such book is and i quote the title incredible xinjiang stories of passion and heritage it discusses an online comedy show situated in the region the book quotes an actor who says that ethnicity is and I caught again not a problem there this says china has been accused of a genocide against the uighurs and xinjiang some books portray china’s battle against the covert 19 pandemic and they talk about the ccp’s historic role lording the leadership for tackling the pandemic. it all began with amazon entering china in 2004,
soon after amazon wanted to grow in the country it wanted to introduce
ebooks and its popular kindle reading device but for that it had to deal with the general administration of press and publication, and this is a regulator that oversees publications in china it is run by the nppa which in turn is
overseen by the ccp’s publicity department itself known as the propaganda department. so what followed was like a barter almost the or regulatory body gave amazon permission to launch the kindle in chinese markets in exchange.
the company partnered with the regulatory authority to set up china books. now fast forward to 2017
china had become the kindle’s largest global market, it accounted for 40 percent of the world device sales volume so even though the china books project flopped financially amazon kept it going and according to an official involved in the project.
it was like a soft power campaign the plan was to basically put the books
out there and make it visible, few of the portals titles have sold well amazon even had to ship back books this
is because its warehouses lacked any space for them but the china books project continues till date a leverage for amazon to grow its business in china we on world is one is now available in your country download the app now and get all the news updates on the move.
Best Search Is Google