The firm said its decision was due to an "increasingly challenging business and legal environment" in the country", the report added.

 

Yahoo users in China are now greeted with a message saying its sites are no longer accessible.

 

The company says Yahoo products and services remain unaffected elsewhere around the world.

 

In a statement, it says: " Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open internet. We thank our users for their support."

 

Yahoo's move follows closely behind Microsoft's announcement last month that it was removing LinkedIn - its business-focused social network - from China, something it also blamed on "a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements", the report added.

 

China is in the midst of a large-scale crackdown on big tech companies - both those from the US and its own native giants.

 

A range of laws passed in recent years contributes to what Yahoo and others characterise as a "challenging" market, the report said.

 

The Personal Information Protection Law - or PIPL - which came into effect on 1 November, is one of them.

 

Designed as a Chinese data-protection law, it introduces a range of regulations about how data can be collected and stored, with the threat of potentially massive fines of up to 5 per cent of a company's annual turnover.