The American tech giant, Microsoft has made a rather big move recently. The corporation is shutting down its LinkedIn application service in the People’s Republic of China. To be precise, Microsoft considers running LinkedIn any further in the country is ‘challenging’ for it. LinkedIn is a formal job searching and career services platform for users worldwide. 

It is not the first time that a tech company has chosen to opt out of the enormous Chinese market and they have very similar reasons: the country’s difficult and vague political regulations related to internet and service providers. 

Microsoft is not completely out of the country in terms of market capturing since its search engine, operating system and other cloud-based services are still available for the users to download.

No Chinese national may now download the application or make new IDs on the existing version of LinkedIn. LinkedIn formally made the announcement and explained the rationale behind the bold move too. Another announcement made by LinkedIn is its new service called InJobs that will render similar services. MarketBusinessTimes

The Regulations in Beijing that Led to the Move

Given China’s population, it is a huge user base for any company and the desired market to capture. This makes it fairly obvious that the reason had to be fairly big for a company as big as Microsoft to depart from the nation. It is making headlines for the decision since no tech company has done it in the recent past.

Microsoft stated that the operating environment had now become challenging and unfavourable for it to continue to render LinkedIn service. The rules and regulations have become more complex and the overall compliance requirements are unsuitable for the company.

The ruling party of China, led by Xi Jinping, has increased its control over the internet and the service providers to exercise stricter control over them. It is also assumed, and reasonably so, that China is reducing its dependence on western countries and their systems.

For the first time in decades, China has imposed anti-monopoly and data security regulations on all internet giants. This has also negatively impacted the country’s economy but the Jinping government is not likely to change it. They have also expressed that they expect that this move will increase competition and create a healthy economic and social environment in the country. Techk Times

The main focus remains on not letting any of the foreign companies become any bigger and imposing on the government. The simple rule is that no external technology should function outside the government’s control and the overall legal jurisdiction. 

Other Concerns China is Addressing Along with the Move

It is also reported that China is trying to reduce their enormous wealth gap by equitably distributing the wealth earned by home companies amongst the owners and those who work for them. Other than that, they are looking to work on rural areas development and generation of employment for their growing population.

InJobs: LinkedIn’s Localised Career-Oriented Platform in China

With the removal of LinkedIn, the job searches and updates option has not completely been removed in China since LinkedIn launched InJobs, a localized version of LinkedIn. The standalone application satisfies the needs of its users without having broken any regulatory requirements. In this way, they have created more employment opportunities and the citizens are more updated too.

InJobs does not have the option of social updates or posting other content. It only focuses on helping companies and job applicants find the right match. InJobs is helping add value to the global workforce.