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Most of the searches for Kitaev materials deal with 4d/5d magnets with spin-orbit-coupled J = ½ local moments such as iridates and α-RuCl3. Here we propose a new Kitaev material candidate YbCl₃. We perform thermodynamic, ac susceptibility and angle-dependent torque measurements on a YbCl₃ single crystal. We find that the Yb³⁺ ion exhibits a Kramers doublet ground state that gives rise to an effective spin J_eff = ½ local moment with likely strong anisotropic exchange interactions. The compound exhibits short-range magnetic ordering at around 1.20 K followed by long-range ordering at 0.60 K. These orderings can be suppressed by in-plane and out-of-plane magnetic fields, resulting in a quantum critical point at around 6 and 10 T, respectively. Furthermore, the non-monotonic decrease of Neel temperature under out-of-plane magnetic fields and the 99.8% of ground state entropy release across the short-range ordering, strongly suggest that YbCl₃ is a close realization of a Kitaev system.