As part of a larger effort to win favor with China’s communist government and expand its business, Amazon complied with the Communist Party’s requests to delete negative comments and reviews of dictator Xi Jinping’s book.
A report by Reuters detailed for the first time how ratings, comments, and reviews were removed from the listing of Xi’s “the Governance of China,” a collection of his speeches and writings, on Amazon’s Chinese website in 2018. The demand for censorship was prompted by negative reviews of Xi’s book on Amazon’s five-star rating system, according to sources who spoke to Reuters.
“I think the issue was anything under five stars,” one of the sources said.
Amazon complied with the Chinese government’s edict, and Reuters reports that today comments, ratings, and reviews remain disabled on Amazon’s Chinese site, Amazon.cn.
It’s yet another example of U.S. companies bending over backward to please Chinese tyrants in order to make money.