In China, Silicon Valley Giants Confront New Walls<br />Unlike Apple, which as a hardware company is considered less threatening by the Chinese government,<br />LinkedIn had to go along with a bargain other internet companies have refused.<br />Xu Mengya, a former marketing employee at LinkedIn China, said<br />that although there were far fewer LinkedIn users in Australia than China, the network there was much more active.<br />It also said it would work with a local Chinese company to set up a data center in southwest China as part of a $1 billion investment.<br />“In general the China market is hard, even for Chinese companies,” said Andy Tian, co-founder<br />of Asia Innovations Group in Beijing and former general manager of Zynga China.<br />Even LinkedIn, which played ball with Chinese censors two years ago in order to<br />get into the country, has had trouble getting traction with a local audience.<br />“It may not be so much that LinkedIn is having trouble in China<br />because they’re a foreign company,” said Mark Natkin, founder of tech research firm Marbridge Consulting.
