"To Reach China, LinkedIn Plays by Local Rules", 9 October 2014

For American technology companies…China is a difficult… place to operate. But…social network LinkedIn, has found a way to do business — by being willing to compromise on the free expression…[I]n February it introduced a Chinese-language version…[which] has attracted about a million new members and seems to have the tacit approval of the government. It is functioning without blockages…A spokesman for LinkedIn, Hani Durzy, said…“While we strongly support freedom of expression…we recognized when we launched that we would need to adhere to the requirements of the Chinese government in order to operate in China. So the decision to proceed in China was one that we weighed heavily.” On the Chinese- and English-language sites in China, the company censors content that the authorities consider politically sensitive, using a combination of software algorithms and human reviewers…”…Although LinkedIn’s strategy has given it access to Chinese speakers, analysts say it poses risks for the company’s reputation and growth strategy…Too much censorship could cause users to flee…Some also say LinkedIn has not communicated clearly how and why it is censoring content…[also refers to 51Jobs.com, Alibaba, Baidu, China Broadband Capital, Evernote, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Microsoft, Sina, Tencent,  Twitter, Vine, Yahoo, Zhaopin]