LinkedIn Waves Goodbye To China, Introduces New Job Platform Amid Stricter Regulations

Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it is shutting down its LinkedIn website in China after “facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements” within the Chinese state.

Though China is saying goodbye to the professional networking webpage, Microsoft is not completely ghosting the superpower. In the announcement, Microsoft revealed it will be replacing LinkedIn with a new platform called InJobs, which will feature some of LinkedIn's career-networking features but “will not include a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles” in order to comply with China’s stricter internet regulations.

This move by Microsoft comes after a Chinese internet regulator told LinkedIn to better police its content, the Wall Street Journal noted Thursday.

“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,” LinkedIn said in a blog post.

“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,” the company added.

This move has been a long time coming since the day the professional networking platform launched in China in 2014. LinkedIn initially acknowledged the challenge of operating in an increasingly censored nation.

“LinkedIn strongly supports freedom of expression and fundamentally disagrees with government censorship. At the same time, we also believe that LinkedIn’s absence in China would deny Chinese professionals a means to connect with others," the company had said.

As China continues to tighten its grip on internet censorship and surveillance, LinkedIn could no longer adhere to its requirements.

LinkedIn is the last major Western social media platform to leave China, following Facebook, Twitter and Google, which all left years ago.

According to Statista’s data, China is LinkedIn’s third-largest market.