Microsoft-owned LinkedIn said Thursday that it will shut down the localized version of its professional social network in China later this year, ending the presence of the last major U.S.-owned social platform still operating openly inside the country.

The company said it will replace LinkedIn China with a stripped-down jobs service called InJobs that will not include a social feed or allow users to publish posts and articles. In its announcement, LinkedIn cited a “significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China” and said the social-sharing side of the service had not achieved the same success as its employment features.

A seven-year experiment with localized social media is ending

LinkedIn entered China in 2014 with a localized product that accepted restrictions on some content in exchange for access to the market. That compromise distinguished the company from Facebook, Twitter, Google and other U.S. platforms that were blocked or withdrew from mainland China.

The arrangement had already come under strain this year. In March, LinkedIn temporarily stopped accepting new Chinese members while it reviewed compliance with local law. The company's March statement acknowledged its obligation to follow Chinese regulations governing the localized service.

By Thursday, LinkedIn concluded that maintaining the social-network functions was no longer workable. Its corporate news release confirmed that the localized platform would be sunset while the company retained a narrower role connecting employers and job seekers.

China's data and content rules are becoming broader

The decision comes amid a sweeping expansion of Chinese technology regulation. China's Data Security Law took effect September 1 and establishes broad obligations governing data processing, security and cross-border handling. The official English text of the Data Security Law says companies handling data in China can face liability when processing activities threaten national security or public interests.

China has also adopted a new Personal Information Protection Law, scheduled to take effect November 1, that sets rules for collection, use and transfer of personal information. Together with existing cybersecurity and content-control requirements, the laws increase the compliance burden for companies operating social and information platforms.

The Washington Post reported that LinkedIn had also faced criticism after restricting the visibility in China of posts or profiles belonging to several U.S. journalists. Its October 14 report described the shutdown as the end of the last major Western social-media service still available in China.

InJobs removes the feature most difficult to regulate

The replacement service is designed around employment rather than public expression. LinkedIn says InJobs will help China-based professionals find jobs and Chinese companies recruit candidates but will not offer a social feed, article publishing or post sharing.

That distinction reduces the amount of politically sensitive user-generated content the company must moderate while preserving a commercial recruiting business. The change illustrates a broader pattern in China's technology market: services that primarily move information among users face heavier scrutiny than tools with more narrowly defined transactional functions.

Time, citing Bloomberg, reported that LinkedIn's mainland service had about 52 million users and noted that the company had become an unusual bridge between Chinese professionals and an international business network. Its report said the company's withdrawal reflects both stronger Chinese controls and the increasing difficulty of satisfying competing expectations in China and the United States.

The decision carries significance beyond LinkedIn

For Microsoft, the move narrows rather than ends its presence in China. The company will continue to operate other products and services there. But LinkedIn's retreat is symbolically important because the platform had been one of the few examples of a large American social network operating under Chinese rules without being completely blocked.

LinkedIn's choice also highlights the strategic tension facing multinational technology companies. Compliance with local law is normally a condition of doing business in any country. In China, however, content restrictions and data requirements can conflict with expectations from users, employees, lawmakers and civil-society groups elsewhere. The larger a platform's role in public communication, the more visible those conflicts become.

A Reuters report published Thursday said LinkedIn was the last major U.S.-owned social network operating in China and that the new InJobs product would remove the ability to share articles or maintain a social feed. The account, carried by the Economic Times, underscored how sharply the product is being narrowed.

The company is therefore not abandoning the Chinese market. It is abandoning the part of LinkedIn that most resembles a social network. That distinction may preserve a recruiting business, but it marks the end of a seven-year attempt to operate a U.S.-style professional content platform inside China's increasingly regulated internet.