Not even LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, seems to be a match for the might of the CCP. As the Chinese government continues to increase pressure on internet companies, LinkedIn, perhaps one of the few large US tech firms still operating in the country, announced that it will be shutting down its local operations amidst a “significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements.”
The Microsoft-owned LinkedIn launched a localized Chinese version back in 2014, built in adherence with local restrictions, and looked only to provide China with a new app solely dedicated to job postings. LinkedIn managed to sustain local operations for nearly 7 years, but amidst rising pressure and increasingly demanding requirements on foreign companies, LinkedIn was forced to cede.
To quote LinkedIn:
“While we’ve found success in helping Chinese members find jobs and economic opportunity, we have not found that same level of success in the more social aspects of sharing and staying informed. We’re also facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China. Given this, we’ve made the decision to sunset the current localized version of LinkedIn, which is how people in China access LinkedIn’s global social media platform, later this year.”
Wall-Mart
To the Chinese who lauded LinkedIn, this came as a big surprise. To the rest of the world, it was an announcement they had long since expected. The company apparently faced ongoing challenges regarding adherence to strict local regulations regarding online speech. Just earlier this year, the platform was sanctioned by Chinese officials for “failing to control political content on its platform.” LinkedIn was supposedly clashing, albeit intermittently, with Chinese online government censorship and found it increasingly difficult to not scale “The Great Firewall”.
LinkedIn has 54 million users in China, which is an impressive count on its own. Yet when compared to its biggest competitor, WeChat, with its 1.25 billion users, LinkedIn’s numbers can’t help but pale in comparison. Given stagnated performance factors and unreasonable regulatory specifications, the platform had assessed that the extra measures simply to maintain localized app-use was not worth the additional investment. When looking at the bigger picture, that’s still 54 million stricken from LinkedIn’s total 774 million user-base and, as the last US social media platform to have maintained operations within China, sends a message to other would-be online hopefuls that anything other than total adherence to Chinese laws will eventually fail.
The Wrap
Facebook tried years ago to enter the Chinese market, but it didn’t take long before even Mark and friends realized that it’d probably be easier to give up than try and circumvent local regulations. Likewise, Twitter had been blocked for years and even search engines like Google and Bing have already left years ago. The limits imposed by the government’s censorship policies are simply too steep. The chances of having a full-fledge social media platform, let alone a foreign one, run normally in the country would be lower than that of surviving extreme hypothermia for 10 minutes.
With respect to LinkedIn, they may be down, but they’re definitely not out… yet. The platform has one last trump card to try and work with Chinese regulators. Called InJObs, LinkedIn explains:
“Later this year, we will launch InJobs, a new, standalone jobs application for China. InJobs will not include a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles. We will also continue to work with Chinese businesses to help them create economic opportunity.”
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