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Amazon must not allow customer ratings or reviews on its platform in China if they want to conduct business there, according to two unidentified people familiar with the incident who were cited in a Reuters report.
The order was reportedly passed about two years ago to prevent "anything under five stars" for Chinese President's book "The Governance of China", which was published in three separate volumes in 2014, 2017 and 2020 respectively.
The comments section on the book's listing on Amazon.cn has also been disabled. Reviews are still enabled on Amazon.com, however.
Amazon first entered the Chinese market in 2004 with an acquisition of Joyo, a local online book shopping market that was later rebranded to Amazon China in 2011, according to CNBC.
The company later announced its departure from the e-retail business space in the country after struggling to gain a foothold in the highly competitive and saturated domestic market.
Negative reviews of propaganda film taken down
This apparent order from local authorities was recorded in an internal 2018 briefing document that lists out a number of issues the American tech company has faced in the country.
According to the document, Amazon was receiving a rising number of requests from Chinese authorities to take down certain content, particularly "politically sensitive ones".
For instance, the Cyberspace Administration of China, which regulates and oversees contents on the internet in the country, allegedly asked the company to take down an IMDb link to the movie Amazing China due to "especially harsh user reviews".
Thereafter, some negative reviews of the movie on the Amazon-owned IMDb website were scrubbed. Their traces remain on archived screenshots of the platform, according to Reuters.
However, Amazon apparently said that IMDb wasn't aware of any request from the Chinese government to do anything to reviews on the site relating to the movie.
The movie, which showcases Xi's achievements in science, technology and poverty reduction ever since he took over as the country's leader, is rated 2.3 out of 10 stars on IMDb, with most reviewers criticising it as a propaganda film that simply "praises" rather than "document".
Greater access to the Chinese market after compliance
It was further reported that shortly after Amazon set up China Books -- a portal on the U.S. site that was set up in collaboration with Chinese authorities -- in 2011, the company began selling Amazon Kindles in China.
China eventually became the largest global market for the e-readers in 2017, accounting for more than 40 per cent of device sales worldwide.
Amazon "complies with all applicable laws and regulations, wherever [they] operate, and China is no exception", a spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Not the first
Amazon wasn't the only western company who is willing to adhere to Chinese censorship rules for access to the large Chinese market.
In December this year, Microsoft launched a new LinkedIn app for China, called InCareer, that doesn't include a social media feed.
The move came after Microsoft said in October that it is shutting down LinkedIn in the country, citing the increasing challenge to comply with the Chinese government, the BBC reported.
The career networking platform was previously criticised for censoring the profiles of American journalists in China.
In 2019, amid concerns from employees and outsiders alike that the company was kowtowing to censorship rules, Google dropped its Dragonfly project, a censored version of its search engine.
Launched in 2017 before its unceremonious termination, it was considered the firm's way back to the world's most populous market after it was banned in 2010.
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Top image via Getty Images & Amazon China