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LinkedIn has approximately 54 million users in China.
Microsoft is shutting down its Chinese social network LinkedIn, saying it is becoming increasingly challenging to comply with Chinese government regulations.
After Chinese private technology companies encountered a series of investigations and bans this year, LinkedIn’s actions highlighted that foreign companies are also affected by the political situation in Beijing when they expand the Chinese market, and may face deeper dilemmas in the environment of tense US-China relations.
LinkedIn: “The business environment is more challenging”
LinkedIn’s senior vice president Mohak Shroff wrote in a blog: “Our business environment in China is more challenging and the requirements are stricter.”
This professional social platform will launch a job-only website called InJobs later this year. The site does not include the ability to share social dynamics, and users cannot share or publish articles-these features are an important factor in the success of LinkedIn in Western markets such as the United States.
LinkedIn China President Lu Jian said in a statement on the 14th: “We have decided to adjust our current strategy and release a series of brand-new products and services within this year. We will focus on providing the value of’connected career opportunities’. Then it covers the publishing and interactive functions of user-created content.”
It is not clear what will happen to the millions of Chinese users who previously used LinkedIn.
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LinkedIn’s social function is an important factor in its success in Western markets such as the United States.
The “exploratory model” failed to enter China
LinkedIn used to be the only major Western social media platform operating in China.
In 2014, LinkedIn entered China with localized services. This move provides a tentative model for other large foreign Internet companies that want to use the Chinese market to make profits. China’s Internet is strictly censored, and many Western social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, cannot be opened within China.
LinkedIn agreed to censor posts posted by Chinese users in accordance with Chinese laws, while other US companies were reluctant to do so, or were unable to complete it at all. In the early days of its establishment, LinkedIn acknowledged this as a challenge, stating that “LinkedIn strongly supports freedom of speech and fundamentally opposes government censorship.”
LinkedIn tried to cooperate with a venture capital company and said it would help improve the relationship between the company and the government. LinkedIn has approximately 800 million users worldwide, and China is one of its largest markets, with approximately 54 million users, second only to the United States and India.
Seven years have passed, and this tentative model has clearly not succeeded. LinkedIn is struggling to compete with local competitors and has also encountered regulatory issues. According to the New York Times, in March this year, LinkedIn was punished by Chinese regulators for failing to censor political content, resulting in the suspension of new user registration in China for 30 days.
LinkedIn also faces new challenges. Beijing is stepping up its implementation of the Data Security Law, and foreign companies like LinkedIn are likely to be subject to further supervision when storing local user data in China. Previously, when the Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing went public in the United States, it was questioned by the Chinese authorities about its data security issues.
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Washington criticizes LinkedIn for “naked appeasement”
The deterioration of the relationship between the United States and China has also affected LinkedIn’s market expansion in China. Washington expressed anger at LinkedIn’s involvement in China’s information control.
Recently, LinkedIn stopped displaying the data of several Chinese journalists, which was criticized by American lawmakers.
U.S. Senator Rick Scott wrote to LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky and Microsoft boss Satya Nadella in a letter last month. The British move was “blatant appeasement, an act of surrender to communist China.”
According to the New York Times, LinkedIn also recruits personnel for spy agencies. US officials said that Chinese intelligence agencies are one of the most active agencies that use this function to achieve their goals.
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LinkedIn blacklisted people share their experiences
Those on the LinkedIn blacklist include American journalist Melissa Chan (Melissa Chan) and independent journalist Greg Bruno (Greg Bruno).
Bruno told the BBC that on September 28 this year, he received a vague email stating that he had used banned content on his personal page, resulting in the account being blocked in China.
“There is only one publication on my personal page, and that is my book, about China’s foreign policy and transnational policy towards Tibetan refugees, and also about exile groups around the world. So I can easily determine which content is offensive.” , Bruno said. “These contents indeed trace the CCP’s continuous development strategy, marginalizing the exile group, and causing a certain degree of disagreement and division within the group.”
Curious about why LinkedIn banned the account three years after his book was published, Bruno posted the news on his Twitter account. He found that at least two other reporters received the same information on the same day.
“Our example highlights the increasingly tense geopolitical landscape between China and the United States,” Bruno believes. “Company CEOs need to think about how they want to deal with an increasingly powerful and authoritarian China,” he said.