How Amazon grew its business in China, including partnering with a government propaganda arm for a books section on Amazon US, AWS-related concessions, and more
Amazon.com Inc was marketing a collection of President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings on its Chinese website about two years ago … Tweets: @neerajka , @aliceysu , @dhakatribune , @_woifgang , @the_iap , @timjgraham , @williamyang120 , @kenroth , @gadyepstein , @oren_cass , @ericgarland , @rachelbovard , @williamnee , @ep_lawrence , and @stevekopack Tweets: Neeraj K. Agrawal / @neerajka : Amazon removed all reviews in China because Xi's book was receiving anything less than 5 star reviews. Amazon said it “complies with all applicable laws and regulations, wherever we operate, and China is no exception.” https://www.cnbc.com/... Alice Su / @aliceysu : Fantastic @Reuters reporting on how Amazon bent over backwards to sell kindle & cloud services in China, including by promoting Xi's books as “best sellers,” censoring reviews of propaganda films & providing a dissident's IP address to authorities https://www.reuters.com/... @dhakatribune : Amazon's compliance with the Chinese government edict, which has not been reported before, is part of a deeper, decade-long effort by the company to win favor in Beijing to protect and grow its business in one of the world's largest marketplaces @amazon https://www.dhakatribune.com/ ... Good Wolf Hunting / @_woifgang : using amazon reviews of Xi's book to voice my discontent https://twitter.com/... @the_iap : It's far past time we recognize our Big Tech overlords are not patriots. They are amoral globalists who will sell out their country for profit without a second thought. Break. Them. Up. https://twitter.com/... Tim Graham / @timjgraham : Amazon puts democracy in darkness. https://twitter.com/... William Yang / @williamyang120 : “In a core element of this strategy, the internal document and interviews show, Amazon partnered with an arm of China's propaganda apparatus to create a selling portal on the company's U.S. site, https://amazon.com/ - a project that came to be known as China Books.” Kenneth Roth / @kenroth : The Chinese government is so terrified of giving a voice to its repressed people that it insisted Amazon disable its rating system and comments for Xi Jinping's book for anyone within China. https://www.reuters.com/... https://twitter.com/... Gady Epstein / @gadyepstein : Very interesting story on Amazon's dealings in China. This jumped out at me: “the company asked Guo [Wengui] to take an action that exposed the dissident's...IP address, and AWS ‘provided to [Ministry of Public Security]’ this data, the document stated” https://www.reuters.com/... Oren Cass / @oren_cass : Feels like only last week I was doing a panel discussion at George Mason University with panelists who argued that using antitrust law to limit the market power of companies like Amazon would harm national security. Wait, it was last week! https://twitter.com/... Eric Garland / @ericgarland : Shocked, I tells ya. https://www.reuters.com/... Rachel Bovard / @rachelbovard : Amazon won't sell @RyanTAnd's book because critiquing modern transgender theory is “hate speech,” but Amazon will bend over backwards to push the preferences of a genocidal Chinese authoritarian regime. Got it. https://twitter.com/... William Nee / @williamnee : This whole article is amazing, but one shocking bit: “AWS's China business continues to grow..AWS has landed key customers in China, say people familiar with the matter. Among them are two Chinese companies, Tiktok developer ByteDance and video-surveillance firm #Hikvision” https://twitter.com/... Edward Lawrence / @ep_lawrence : Some brilliant digging here form Reuters. Amongst other things, it handed off cloud services to a local company and provided the IP address of a dissident to China's Ministry of Public Security 👇 https://twitter.com/... Steve Kopack / @stevekopack : “Amazon partnered with an arm of China's propaganda apparatus to create a selling portal on the company's U.S. site...” and documents show “that it was seen by Amazon as crucial to winning support in China as the company grew” various businesses there https://t.co/w7IOUq88hl
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon’s China expansion paired retail and cloud ambitions with government-facing operational concessions: a China Books portal on Amazon.com, constrained reviews in China, and a locally operated AWS presence. Related coverage of a prosecution over a critical WhatsApp message provides the political-information backdrop for why content controls carried commercial significance.
The AWS dimension matters beyond retail. Amazon had already been described as a cloud provider that is easy to adopt but difficult to leave, while its China business added customers including ByteDance and Hikvision under a locally operated structure.
First-order effects
- Users in China lost normal review functionality for Xi Jinping’s book and propaganda films, while Amazon promoted state-approved titles through its retail properties.
- AWS’s China operation accepted a local operating handoff and provided a dissident’s IP address to the Ministry of Public Security, tying service delivery to Chinese compliance demands.
Second-order effects
- Chinese customers such as ByteDance and Hikvision received AWS services through a structure shaped by local control, reducing Amazon’s ability to run that market on its standard global terms.
- Amazon’s U.S. storefront became part of its China market-access strategy through the China Books portal, extending the effects of local concessions beyond the China-only site.
Third-order effects
- The case points to a cloud-and-commerce model in which access to tightly controlled markets is conditioned on localized operations and state-aligned information policies rather than a uniform global product.
- If comparable concessions become a recurring requirement for foreign platforms, international expansion will increasingly divide services by national rules for content, data, and operational control.
The trend: Cross-border technology platforms are being pushed toward country-specific operating models as governments link market access to control over information and cloud infrastructure.