Anyone traveling in Shanghai or Beijing these days will notice one billboard advertisement in particular. Whether in the metro or at bus stops: the blue and white advertisements for LinkedIn are currently hard to miss. The growing interest of young Chinese in the business network is primarily the result of better education and more intensive international networking.
Compared to the current 649 million Chinese Internet users, the number of eight million LinkedIn users (as of February 2015) initially seems small. The management of the American network can nevertheless count itself satisfied. In the past, foreign providers have not had an easy time gaining a foothold in the Middle Kingdom. Despite intensive efforts, eBay and Amazon have not yet been able to prevail against domestic brands such as TMall and Taobao.
Search engine giants such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo are largely powerless against providers such as Baidu – mainly because they have made themselves popular with local users with offers specifically tailored to Chinese needs. The fact that Baidu’s results for English or German search queries are still patchy may not bother most Chinese people much.
Unique opportunity to get in touch with foreign companies
The advantage that LinkedIn has: There is currently no Chinese equivalent that could seriously compete with the business network. 51job.com and Maimai provide access to a huge number of job offers, but so far offer users few opportunities for real interaction with employers. On LinkedIn, on the other hand, applicants have the opportunity to talk to potential superiors or customers about common interests, for example. Given the increasing number of highly qualified graduates and increasing competition between companies and services, Chinese people also value personal contact with people from companies and are therefore enthusiastic about the popular network from the USA.
LinkedIn is of particular interest to well-educated, young Chinese from megacities such as Shanghai, Beijing or Guangzhou. Most of them speak excellent English, and many have studied abroad. And a not insignificant number are also specifically looking for work abroad. “Our goal is to invest in China in the long term and increase the number of users to 50 million in the next five years,” says Derek Shan, LinkedIn’s China boss.
With a Chinese-language version, LinkedIn has been targeting users within the People’s Republic for some time, while the network has enjoyed a high level of popularity in the largely English-speaking special administrative region of Hong Kong for years – among both corporations and start-ups.
“Red Rabbit” as a trademark
To appeal to young Chinese, the business network is currently working on “Red Rabbit”, an app aimed specifically at students and young university graduates. Chinese people are immediately reminded of the historical novel “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”. In it, a horse named “Red Rabbit” is said to have heroism and special perseverance. Cate Cadell of the news platform Technode believes that LinkedIn is demonstrating a remarkable level of cultural sensitivity with its new app – both in terms of name choice and design.
As part of a lecture at the Changshu Institute of Technology on September 14, 2015, I will discuss the opportunities and possibilities of LinkedIn in Germany and China in more detail.