Internal memos alongside insiders from Amazon.com have revealed the company's concerted effort to appease the Chinese Communist Party - including by partnering with state propaganda operatives and scrubbing web reviews critical of the regime.
Notably, the e-commerce giant submitted to a Chinese Communist Party demand that it stop allowing negative customer ratings on a book containing a collection of leader Xi Jinping's speeches and writings.
An internal briefing from 2018 describes several "Core Issues" the company has faced while operating in China, including "Ideological control and propaganda is the core of the toolkit for the communist party to achieve and maintain its success." "We are not making judgement on whether it is right or wrong," the document added.
One of Amazon's primary strategies to cozy up to the Chinese Communist Party was partnering with a propaganda arm of the regime for a venture dubbed "China Books." The partnership was described as a "Key element to safeguard" Amazon's relationship with Beijing, according to the internal memo.
Several titles published under the China Books initiative were designed explicitly to amplify Chinese Communist Party propaganda and fake narratives about issues including the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the origins of COVID-19.
China Books, according to a former Amazon executive, appeared to serve as the company's way "To get what we wanted on Kindle and other things," in reference to the Chinese Communist Party not granting the company full license to operate the online reading service in China.
"Both China Books and Kindle Chinese eBook Store are Amazon China's main commitment to assist China in 'Going Abroad,' an umbrella project that aims to promote Chinese culture to the world," an internal company memo added.
https://thenationalpulse.com/2021/12/24/amazon-partnered-with-ccp-propaganda-arm/
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