Dangdang.com founder Li Guoqing talks about the battle with Amazon: They originally wanted to acquire us, but ended up withdrawing from China

"Zhenghe Island" released an interview with Dangdang's founder, Li Guoqing, yesterday. Li Guoqing talked about topics such as "battling Amazon" and reminisced about past experiences. After founding Dangdang, Li Guoqing engaged in what was considered the "most exciting" battle, the "Dangdang vs. Amazon" showdown. Reflecting on that experience, Li Guoqing revealed that Amazon had initially intended to acquire Dangdang and even made a $1 billion offer, determined to succeed. In 2003 and 2004, Dangdang's sales were 150 million RMB. Wherever Amazon went that year, they emerged victorious, crippling the UK's online book market within a year. Subsequently, they moved on to Germany, France, Japan, and South Korea, threatening us by saying, "If you don't sell, we'll engage in a price war with you." Li Guoqing believed that while Amazon excelled in selling English books, their success in the Chinese book market was "not guaranteed" at the time, especially since China's e-commerce sector was still immature, accounting for less than 1% of their global sales. "As a multinational corporation, their decision-making process was also quite lengthy." Li Guoqing admitted that the price war at that time was "unprecedentedly fierce." Amazon used web crawlers every night to select 100,000 books from Dangdang and then priced each book 1 yuan, 0.1 yuan, or 10% lower than Dangdang's prices. In response, Li Guoqing ordered Dangdang to fight back. After a month of adjusting prices, the discounts went from 25% to 35%, and even 50%. "I disclosed this situation at various meetings, shocking domestic private bookstores and causing a stir among publishers." I used this opportunity to warn publishers about Amazon's ambitions and actively approached the China Publishing Association, the China Book Distribution Association, and other relevant departments, demanding that publishers stop supplying websites engaged in unfair competition according to the "Anti-Unfair Competition Law." In the end, Amazon's book business in China lost $1 billion and quietly exited the Chinese market