Photo: Screenshot of Amazon.com

Amazon is receiving public scorn once again for selling offensive items on its retail platform. The US online retail behemoth has angered many Chinese consumers after they discovered t-shirts and coffee mugs featuring the slogan “Coronavirus made in China” were being sold on the platform. If Amazon doesn’t want to stand against their Chinese consumers, the company should apologize and punish vendors for selling such items.

Although the items in question were not being sold by the company but by platform vendors, Amazon still deserves to be criticized. Listing products with offensive coronavirus slogans exposes the platform’s lack of vendor supervision.

The online company should identify its supervision flaws to avoid social and political issues. Chinese netizens called for an Amazon boycott last year after it was discovered that vendors were selling t-shirts featuring slogans like "Free Hong Kong, Democracy Now" in support of the violent protests in Hong Kong. It is clear Amazon has yet to learn anything, nor has it bothered to make management improvements.

With Amazon allowing vendors to sell items on its platform that feature an offensive slogan about the coronavirus, it could serve a blow to the company’s reputation for having a laid-back and playful mindset on a virus that has claimed over 2,000 lives in China. 

We would like to believe that Amazon doesn’t want to be known as unsympathetic because of its poor supervisory flaws.

The author is a reporter with the Global Times. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn