LinkedIn has been the lone major American social network
allowed to operate in China. The Microsoft-owned service for professionals
censors the posts made by its millions of Chinese users.
But it is not clear what material got the company into
trouble. The regulator said it had found objectionable posts circulating in the
period around an annual meeting of China's lawmakers, The New York Times
reported citing people, who have been briefed on the matter.
As a punishment, the people said, officials are requiring
LinkedIn to perform a self-evaluation and offer a report to the Cyberspace
Administration of China, the country's internet regulator.
The service was also forced to suspend new sign-ups of users
inside China for 30 days, one of the people added, though that period could
change depending on the administration's judgment.
The Cyberspace Administration of China did not immediately
respond to a faxed request for comment.
Last week, Microsoft's professional networking site LinkedIn
said it is pausing new member registrations in China as the company works to
ensure it remains in compliance with local law.
China is known to heavily regulate and censor domestic
internet usage and actively block any websites or links that are seen as going
against the narrative of the communist party.
The country has the world's most sophisticated censorship
system known as the 'Great Firewall'. The Chinese government controls the media
through techniques including blocking IP addresses, DNS attacks and filtering
specific URLs and keywords within URLs, according to South China Morning Post
(SCMP).
According to an SCMP article in November, over the years,
the number of websites blocked in China has ballooned to 10,000.
The blacklist includes social networks like Facebook,
Instagram and WhatsApp; news outlets like Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal
and The New York Times; and popular collaboration tools such as Dropbox and
Google Drive (or anything else on Google).
In 2016, Freedom House ranked China last for the second
consecutive year out of 65 countries that represent 88 per cent of the world's
internet users. (ANI)
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