Asian Tech Press (Oct 15) -- Microsoft subsidiary LinkedIn Corp. will take down its localized version of LinkedIn in China later this year and launch its replacement, InJobs, a new, standalone job search app, the company said Thursday.

Mohak Shroff, senior vice president and head of engineering at LinkedIn, said in an official blog Thursday that the company has decided to sunset the current localized version of LinkedIn in China because it is "facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements" in the country.

The company will launch a new job search application called InJobs later this year to replace LinkedIn for Chinese job seekers, "which will not include a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles," Shroff said.

In response, a number of media outlets, including the BBC and CNBC, said that LinkedIn was "the only major Western social-media platform operating in China." The shutdown of LinkedIn in China now means a complete "collapse" of the world-dominating U.S. social networks in China.

The company's Chinese unit responded late Thursday night on China's Twitter-like platform, saying the news was untrue and posting a letter from Jian Lu, president of LinkedIn China, to its Chinese members.

In the letter, Lu said the company decided to adjust the current strategy and release a series of new products and services this year in China, which will focus on providing the value of "connecting career opportunities" and no longer include features for posting user-generated content (UGC), and interacting with them.

In March, LinkedIn announced that it had temporarily suspended new member sign-ups in China, saying that "we work to ensure we remain in compliance with local law."

LinkedIn, a global job-seeking social platform, was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Silicon Valley.

Launched in China in February 2014, LinkedIn has been operating for seven years. And it was acquired by Microsoft in 2016 for $26.2 billion.

According to its official statistics, as of June 30, 2021, LinkedIn has more than 774 million members in 200 countries and regions worldwide. Among them, there are more than 54 million members in mainland China, which is the third-largest market for LinkedIn, after the United States and India.