LinkedIn to set up Chinese-language website aligned with state censorship rules

LinkedIn Corp is establishing a Chinese-language website that would restrict some content to adhere to state censorship rules, as it seeks to expand in a country where US technology companies had clashed with the government.

The Mountain View, California-based professional network is offering a fresh version  with a local flavour after over a decade of having a English-language site there, according to a blog post by Derek Shen, LinkedIn's China president.

The company is also establishing a joint venture with Sequoia China and China Broadband Capital that would connect 140 million Chinese professionals, he wrote. According to LinkedIn it had over more than four 4 million subscribers in China, and was one of the company's fastest-growing user bases.

The new website would see LinkedIn make deeper forays in a country where social-media peers such as Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc remain blocked after they found the going difficult under government censorship rules.

According to spokeswoman Debbie Frost, Facebook had not built up operations in China beyond hiring contractors to help advertisers reach people outside of the country.

There is so far no major professional networking site in China, which gives LinkedIn room for expansion, according to Erin Ennis, vice president of the US-China Business Council.

Associated Press quoted Enniss as saying they had got the beginnings of a client base for what their product did. He added, when it came to censorship, ''the realities of doing business in China are that you have to comply with the rules of doing business there.''

However, according to Richard Fontaine,  president of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based research organisation focused on global security issues such as the emergence of China's economic power, the move could set the wrong precedent.

''They should enter the market with the aim of a net expansion of free online expression rather than a diminishment of it,'' Fontaine wrote in an e-mail.

LinkedIn is 93 per cent owner of the China joint venture with Sequoia Capital and CBC. The other partners contributed $5 million in cash for a 7 per cent stake, according to a filing earlier this month with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The partners have the option to contribute an additional $20 million for preferred shares, the filing said.