Amazon Censors Criticism of China

Amazon Censors Criticism of China
People enter the Amazon Books in New York City on May 25, 2017. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Anders Corr
2/23/2023
Updated:
3/1/2023
0:00
Commentary

Amazon is concerning a group of authors and publishers highly critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The company, headquartered in Seattle and Arlington, does extensive business with China, from which it sells vast quantities of imported products in its core markets of the United States, Europe, and Japan.

According to EcomCrew, over 63 percent of all third-party Amazon sellers are from China (including Hong Kong). Amazon obscures this crucial fact by not automatically listing the country of origin on the products it sells.

Given its supply dependence on China, Amazon’s recent censorship of a book review critical of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the CCP raises questions about bias.

Paul Kenchington, a reviewer from Britain, attempted to publish his review of Benedict Rogers’ “China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny“ on Feb. 6, and was informed by Amazon on Feb. 9 that it was rejected due to “inappropriate content.”

The reviewer resubmitted it without his name at the bottom—which he thought could have been the problem—and the review was again rejected, this time with a threat to remove his community privileges.

Benedict Rogers, co-founder and chief executive of the UK-based human rights group Hong Kong Watch, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington on July 15, 2019. (Lynn Lin/The Epoch Times)
Benedict Rogers, co-founder and chief executive of the UK-based human rights group Hong Kong Watch, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington on July 15, 2019. (Lynn Lin/The Epoch Times)

Neither communication to Kenchington, the second of which he thought was “rather rude,” specified what exactly Amazon considered inappropriate about the review.

Amazon did not respond to requests for additional information from either Kenchington or The Epoch Times.

The censored review stated, “Xi Jinping’s return towards Mao-type violent oppression and Stalinist authoritarian control is truly something that the world should sit up and take note of.”

Does Amazon consider this an “attack on people you disagree with,” which is banned under its community guidelines?
Amazon did not remove criticism of U.S. presidents Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Why the double standard when it comes to Xi?

Is the review rejection, therefore, a biased infringement of free speech, especially given the near monopoly power of Amazon over e-commerce in its core markets? Would it require Congress to haul Amazon’s founder and executive chairman, Jeff Bezos, before a committee to get a decent answer to a simple question?

Kenchington wrote in the review, “The chapters on ‘Hong Kong’, ‘Christianity Under Fire’, ‘Tibet’, ‘Uyghur Genocide’ and Chinese involvement in mass-harvesting of body parts were for me a shocking revelation which made me so angry with Chinese policies and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) political system.”

More than a dozen Hong Kong people are holding LED luminaires and electronic candles to display the words "Free HK political prisoners" atop Lion Rock in Hong Kong on Dec. 31, 2022. (Hui Tat/The Epoch Times)
More than a dozen Hong Kong people are holding LED luminaires and electronic candles to display the words "Free HK political prisoners" atop Lion Rock in Hong Kong on Dec. 31, 2022. (Hui Tat/The Epoch Times)

Was the censorship because the author said genocide made him “angry”?

What is an appropriate emotion in response to genocide? Sadness? Fear? Neither alone would have helped Jewish people, for example, defend themselves from the Holocaust.

Britain’s prime minister during World War II, Winston Churchill, attempted to maintain an even temper and once noted that “a man is about as big as the things that make him angry.”

But anger arguably has a place in defense of one’s country and human rights more broadly. Churchill was angry at Adolf Hitler, for example, calling him “evil” and comparing him to the “devil.”

Apparently, Amazon’s community guidelines would have censored Churchill at the time.

Yet Churchill used his anger in that case to good effect, explaining that we must be “fierce” in opposing the Nazis. One shudders to imagine how history would have changed for the worse had Hitler not made Churchill sufficiently angry to respond with a fierce defense of not only Britain, but all of Europe.

Rogers framed Amazon’s censorship in the context of the CCP’s broad-ranging influence operations around the world.

“If Amazon’s decision to reject this endorsement of my book was no accident, it would illustrate that this is another arena where the CCP has instilled fear and gained influence,” he wrote.

“It is a sad day when censorship, for fear of upsetting Beijing, stretches as far as denying a person in Britain the right to post a review of a book about China.”

The Canadian publisher of the book, Dean Baxendale, noted that “this is not the first time book reviews and or descriptions for books have been censored by Amazon in order to not offend the sensibilities of those who run China.”

He mentioned another of his books, “Wilful Blindness: How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West“ by Sam Cooper, whose description he said Amazon also censored. ”Wilful Blindness” covers links between the CCP, illegal drug dealing, gambling, money laundering, and Canadian politicians.
Full disclosure: My latest book is also published by Baxendale’s Optimum Publishing International.

“At some point Bezos and Amazon will need to choose between [m]aking more profit through supporting slave labour in Xinjiang or finding the courage to stand up for freedom and democracy by realigning supply chains to companies and nations that stand by a solid ESG framework,” Baxendale continued.

In contrast to Amazon, Waterstones, an online book vendor, allowed Kenchington’s review to stand. He ended it with a thought about Rogers’ “China Nexus” that Bezos should take to heart.

“This book is not easy to read; indeed it is a tough task but a MUST for anyone who wants to understand the real threat that China poses.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Anders Corr has a bachelor's/master's in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea" (2018).
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