The Biden administration has said it will turn to allies to help pressure China on tech policies it deems unfair. The run-in with the regulator came just weeks before Thursday’s scheduled meeting between Chinese and American officials in Alaska, the first face-to-face sit-down of the Biden administration.Ĭompetition over technology has been a key sticking point between the two countries. LinkedIn’s China service, which has more than 50 million members, makes it vulnerable to tensions between the two powers. In Washington, critics say such barriers are symptomatic of China’s unwillingness to follow global norms governing the internet and technology more broadly. services like Facebook, Twitter and Google over its inability to control what is posted there. The punishment underscores deep divisions between the United States and China over how the internet should work.įor years, China’s government has blocked major U.S. LinkedIn’s presence in China has long drawn interest across Silicon Valley as a potential path into the country’s walled-off internet, home to the world’s largest group of web users. The Cyberspace Administration of China did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment. The service was also forced to suspend new sign-ups of users inside China for 30 days, one of the people added, though that period could change depending on the administration’s judgment. Though it isn’t clear precisely what material got the company into trouble, the regulator said it had found objectionable posts circulating in the period around an annual meeting of China’s lawmakers, said these people, who asked for anonymity because the issue isn’t public.Īs a punishment, the people said, officials are requiring LinkedIn to perform a self-evaluation and offer a report to the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet regulator. Now, it’s in hot water for not censoring enough.Ĭhina’s internet regulator rebuked LinkedIn executives this month for failing to control political content, according to three people briefed on the matter. To do so, the Microsoft-owned service for professionals censors the posts made by its millions of Chinese users. Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.LinkedIn has been the lone major American social network allowed to operate in China. (Updates with outside comment in fourth paragraph.)įor more articles like this, please visit us at In a statement, LinkedIn said the move isn’t related to the hack. “There could be compliance issues in how they’re registering people, but I haven’t seen any reporting in the Chinese press to suggest that there was something coming down the pike.” The announcement comes a week after Microsoft said state-sponsored hackers based in China were behind a massive attack on its Microsoft Exchange Server product that has claimed at least 60,000 victims.Ĭhina may be signaling displeasure over Microsoft blaming the country for the attack, Segal said. Read more about Microsoft’s history in China here. He pointed to Microsoft’s long-running business in the country, and China’s antitrust probe against the company in 2014. “Microsoft has a long torturous history in China,” said Adam Segal, director of the digital and cyberspace policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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