Tuesday, 16 August 2005

Net Giants Bet Big on China's Potential

The Internet gold rush is on in China. A surprisingly successful initial stock offering in early August by Baidu, known as China's Google, recalled the dot-com exuberance of the late 1990s. And last week, Yahoo announced a billion investment in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, reportedly the largest U.S. investment in a Chinese company to date. EBay, meanwhile, is investing heavily in its Chinese auction business and hopes to break ground soon in Shanghai on its Chinese headquarters, which will be its largest overseas operation. And venture-capital investment in China, much of it by Silicon Valley firms, has swung upward. ``We're looking at five, 10 to 15 years, we think this might be the largest e-commerce environment in the world and Internet search market in the world,'' Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig said last week in Beijing when announcing the Alibaba investment.