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LinkedIn, a networking platform used by millions of employees and companies, said on Monday it will reduce its operations in China, capping a multiyear retreat that exemplified the challenges of opening a foreign business in China.
The company, owned by Microsoft, said it will lay off 716 employees worldwide, including a team dedicated to engineering and marketing in China, because of slumping demand. It did not say how many of those layoffs would be in China.
LinkedIn will also shut down its China job posting app, a bare-bones version of its international service, in August. Users of the app, called InCareer, can only search for jobs and not post or share articles like they can on LinkedIn.
When LinkedIn launched a Chinese-language version of its website in 2014, it blazed a trail that its peers, including Facebook and Google, didn’t follow. It partnered with local companies and began censoring the content of millions of Chinese customers under Beijing’s strict laws. Several US journalists and activists said their profiles had been blocked because of “prohibited content.” The company said that while it opposes government censorship, its absence from the country could reduce Chinese professionals’ opportunities to make professional connections.
But over the years, challenges to foreign and domestic social media platforms have grown as the power of China’s censorship machine has grown under its leader, Xi Jinping. In 2021, LinkedIn closed its flagship networking service in China, citing compliance issues and a “more challenging operating environment.”
In a letter to employees, Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn’s chief executive, said the cuts were prompted by slower revenue growth and fluctuations in customer behavior. The news follows an overall crash in tech that has led to tens of thousands of layoffs this year by the biggest companies, including Amazon, Meta and Google.
LinkedIn, which employs about 20,000 people, said on Monday that while it is reducing operations in China and other countries, it plans to create 250 jobs in other regions.
Mr Roslansky said he would remain in China to help companies operating in the country hire and train workers from abroad.
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