LinkedIn is shutting down the Chinese version of its professional social networking service, becoming the latest Western company to shut down services in China amid heightened competition and an increasingly tight regulatory environment.
The Microsoft-owned company announced on Tuesday that it was closing InCareer, the short-time job application site it used to have it replaced the localized social networking site LinkedIn which closed in 2021. At the time, LinkedIn said it was facing a “significantly more challenging operating environment and increased compliance requirements.”
LinkedIn wrote on his official WeChat account on Tuesday: “Although we have made initial progress over the past year, InCareer has faced increasingly fierce competition and macroeconomic challenges.” The service will close in three months, on August 9, but the company will maintain a presence in China to help local groups hire and train employees outside the country.
Unlike the full LinkedIn site, InCareer doesn’t have a social media feed or the ability to share posts or articles. Chinese online recruiting platform Boss Zhipin and social networking site Maimai overtook LinkedIn in China, where it launched in 2014 and once had tens of millions of regular users. Social media rivals Facebook and Twitter have been blocked in China for more than a decade.
A programmer at LinkedIn’s China office said the company held a meeting on Tuesday morning to inform employees it was cutting staff. The individual said that most of the coding team had been fired at the same time.
LinkedIn Chief Executive Officer Ryan Roslansky wrote in a letter to employees on Monday that the company would cut 716 jobs globally, including its product and engineering teams in China.
InCareer still retained a limited messaging feature. Its closure gives foreign businesses and investors fewer tools to monitor their operations in China.
A regulatory official said LinkedIn was being scrutinized by officials because it allowed foreigners to communicate with Chinese employees. “This is a problem because the authorities cannot track the conversations,” the official said.
The move comes as Chinese authorities increase their scrutiny over US companies in the wake of a counterintelligence law that appears to have broadened the scope of documents and data that can be defined as pertinent to national security.
On Monday, China announced that its state security services had raided multiple offices of international consulting firm Capvisionstating that the advisory group had passed sensitive information overseas.
State broadcaster CCTV aired an in-depth report on Monday evening accusing the consultancy of arranging interviews with well-known government policy, national defense and technology experts, some of whom revealed sensitive information during the consultations.
LinkedIn is the latest in a series of Western companies significantly reducing their presence in the Chinese market as they face a tougher regulatory environment and fierce internal competition.
Amazon announced last year that it would close its Chinese ebook store next monthexiting a once important sales source for the Kindle business unit.
This came a month after Airbnb decided to close its business in Chinaciting “pandemic challenges”.
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