American technology giant Microsoft said today it will withdraw its professional social network LinkedIn from the Chinese market this year.

The Redmond, Washington-based company bought LinkedIn for more than $26 billion back in 2016.

The news has come amidst a flurry of changes in the Asian nation regarding its regulatory changes as well as the rising tensions between the company and the country. Two weeks ago, Microsoft landed under heavy scrutiny for its stance on blocking the profiles of some U.S. journalists in China.

The company is hardly the only American enterprise to find it hard to balance the authoritarian demands of the Chinese government and its own business goals. Here, Microsoft took a sharp approach to a problem that likely would have only become exacerbated over time; the software giant could choose to either bow to the demands of the Chinese government to limit access of individual profiles it found unacceptable—that journalists were suffering from blocks is not a surprise, given the media environment inside China—or walk.

It chose the latter.

In a blog post discussing the news, LinkedIn wrote that the company described its 2014 decision to enter the Chinese market, which meant "adherence to requirements of the Chinese government on Internet platforms" despite it also "strongly support[ing] freedom of expression.".

As China shakes up regulations, tech companies suffer

In the meantime, LinkedIn wrote that it now "faces an significantly more difficult operating environment and more strict compliance requirements in China." That changed market landscape led the company to the "decision to sunset the current localized version of LinkedIn, which is how people in China access LinkedIn's global social media platform, later this year.

Microsoft shares are trading up about 1.6% so far today, up around the same percentage as the technology-driven Nasdaq Composite index. Investors are shrugging off the news, in other words.

What that decision might mean for Microsoft's future relationship with the Chinese market and state remains unclear at this juncture. The Chinese Communist Party, for instance, has been changing its cloud market at home in ways that could limit its commercial future for foreign companies. When it comes to Microsoft's Chinese LinkedIn decision, it might be seen as part of a possible larger-scale decoupling of the tech shop and the nation.