(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. will shut its Chinese ebook store next year, pulling a small but prominent business from a market where it’s failed to make major inroads against local rivals.

The e-commerce giant will discontinue the Kindle eBook store on June 30, 2023, a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. It promised to continue supporting Kindle readers, or refund any device purchases made after January this year.

Amazon’s e-commerce business retreated from the country in 2019 after a decades-long struggle to chip away at the dominance of local players Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc. Its Kindle pullout coincides with growing regulatory pressures on both local and foreign companies that operate in China, including censorship and content curbs. Tencent Holdings Ltd. is the distant leader in ebooks in the country.

US internet firms including Yahoo and Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn have announced they’ll be scaling back their operations in China in recent years, citing a challenging environment. 

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