'China is a country that is returning to what it believes it has always been, namely the center of Asian affairs' - Henry Kissinger
Linkedin announced this week that it is launching a beta site for China's business men and women, adding that it will comply with the communist government's censorship laws. The announcement was featured on the Linkedin page of its founder and CEO Jeff Weiner.
Linkedin will "compete with established Chinese-language services Tianji, owned by France's Viadeo SA, and homegrown rivals Ruolin and Dajie. LinkedIn says it has 4 million users in China but until now its service was in English," according to cio-today.com.
The announcement is noteworthy, particularly since China has earned an unfortunate reputation as a country with severe censorship issues pertaining to media. Western social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are not available. China's social media remains very big in China, however, according to Jeremy Webb, Head of Social Ogilvy.
"The western platforms are not accessible in China, but that's not to say that social media is not sophisticated," Webb said.
"The Chinese government has long kept tight reins on both traditional and new media avoid potential subversions of its authority," reported the Council of Foreign Affairs (CFA). "This often entails strict media controls using monitoring systems, shuttering publications or websites, and jailing dissident journalists, bloggers and activists."
However China remains a " burgeoning economy[that] has allowed for greater diversity in [its] media coverage. Experts say the growing Chinese demand for information is testing the regime's control over the media," according to CFA.
Weiner sees it as a positive step for a country, a population of 1.3 billion, as it continues to ascend with its political economy.
"With more than four million members, China has quickly become one of the fastest growing countries for LinkedIn. That's why today, we are pleased to announce the launch of our beta site in Simplified Chinese," Weiner said.
"The new Simplified Chinese website will broaden our reach to the country's more than 140 million professionals who currently represent roughly one in five of the world's knowledge workers. Our goal is to connect these Chinese professionals with each other and with the rest of LinkedIn's 277 million members in over 200 countries and territories," Weiner added.
Weiner also made mention to China's continual strong GDP growth with 50 million jobs, which have been created in urban areas.
Censorship in China however remains a big problem.
"Such restrictions have hampered some other Internet services. Google Inc. closed its mainland search engine in 2010 after a dispute over censorship," as reported by cio-today.com.
LinkedIn Corp., which is headquartered in Mountain View, California, acknowledged that expanding in China raises "difficult questions" because it will be required to censor content.
Elizabeth Economy, who just published By All Means Necessary said:
"We have only a limited understanding of one of the great trans-formative processes that we're all living in today. Is China actually the savior of the global economy or is it the scourge of good global governance?", Economy asked.
"We are talking about a country of 1.3 billion, that is the second largest economy that has been growing until recently at 9 to 10% per year for two decades... The picture we are seeing now is not what we will see in 5 or 10 years. Chinese practices are evolving, and in some cases, in very positive directions," Economy added.
China is certainly a country on the rise.
"It's unlikely that in 10 years the next generation will come into office with exactly the same institutions that exist today," said Henry Kissinger, who as Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon made a secret trip to the Asian country in 1971, which led to an opening of relations between the U.S. and China.
