"LinkedIn has been the lone major American social network allowed to operate in China. To do so, the Microsoft-owned service for professionals censors the posts made by its millions of Chinese users. Now, it’s in hot water for not censoring enough. China’s internet regulator rebuked LinkedIn executives this month for failing to control political content, according to three people briefed on the matter. Though it isn’t clear precisely what material got the company into trouble, the regulator said it found objectionable posts circulating in the period around an annual meeting of China’s lawmakers, said these people, who asked for anonymity because the issue isn’t public. 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 (CAC), 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, although that time period could change depending on the administration’s judgment. The CAC did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment. LinkedIn’s presence in China has long drawn interest across Silicon Valley as a potential path into the country’s walled-off internet, home to the world’s largest group of web users. The punishment underscores deep divisions between the United States and China over how the internet should work. For years, China’s government has blocked major U.S. services like Facebook, Twitter and Google over their inability to control what is posted there. In Washington, critics say such barriers are symptomatic of China’s unwillingness to follow global norms governing the internet and technology more broadly."