Amazon: Emulating the Big Apple
December 23, 2021
I love the idea that giant technology companies operate in a space untethered from too many conventions, regulatory constraints, and ethical meshes. Apple I have heard entered into a two-buck deal with China. Okay, okay, the dollar amount was closer to US$ 3 billion. What’s the big deal?
Now it seems that Amazon has channeled its inner apple core. “Amazon Partnered with China Propaganda Arm” reports in a truthy and trustworthy way:
That [once confidential Amazon] briefing document, and interviews with more than two dozen people who have been involved in Amazon’s China operation, reveal how the company has survived and thrived in China by helping to further the ruling Communist Party’s global economic and political agenda, while at times pushing back on some government demands. 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, Amazon.com – a project that came to be known as China Books. The venture – which eventually offered more than 90,000 publications for sale – hasn’t generated significant revenue. But the document shows that it was seen by Amazon as crucial to winning support in China as the company grew its Kindle electronic-book device, cloud-computing and e-commerce businesses.
Is it a surprise that China’s ruling elite told the dog outside the online bookstore to bite the digital hand of any human or bot daring to give a very special book a bad review.
What is the book, one might ask? It appears that the instant best seller and biographical high water mark is “Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.
The answer, one supposes, is money. The truthy and trustworthy report says:
Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is now one of the largest providers to Chinese companies globally, according to a report this year by analysis firm iResearch in China, and people who have worked for AWS.
Gee, Leader Xi can ping Amazon and Apple any time he chooses. Let’s make a TikTok on a mobile and a desktop too while dining at a TikTok restaurant. Endangered animal stir fry, anyone? It is called Kung Pao Democracy I think.
Stephen E Arnold, December 23, 2021
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