Microsoft-owned LinkedIn Inc said it will shut down its professional networking service in China later this year, citing "a more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements," in a move that complements the split between US and China social networks, according to a report. When Karen Wise and Paul Mozor wrote in the New York Times.
LinkedIn said it will introduce a new app for the Chinese market that will focus only on job postings, and will not contain social networking features such as sharing posts and commenting, which have been essential to LinkedIn's success in the United States and elsewhere.
LinkedIn's action ends what has been one of the longest running experiments of a foreign social network in China, where the Internet is closely controlled by the government.
Twitter and Facebook were banned in the country for several years, and Google left more than a decade ago, according to a New York Times report.
The Internet in China operates behind a filter system known as the Great Firewall, is tightly controlled and is on its own, according to a New York Times report.
When LinkedIn expanded into China in 2014 with a local service, it provided a temporary model for other major foreign internet companies looking to tap into the huge, lucrative market that is heavily censored.
LinkedIn has teamed up with a well-connected company, and has said it will help it with government relations.
But LinkedIn has also agreed to censor posts by millions of Chinese users in accordance with Chinese laws, something other US companies have often been reluctant or unable to do.
In 2014, LinkedIn acknowledged the challenge, saying that "LinkedIn strongly supports freedom of expression and fundamentally disagrees with government censorship. At the same time, we also believe that the absence of LinkedIn in China will deprive Chinese professionals of a way to communicate with others."
But 7 years later, it became clear that the experiment had not worked.