中国或将成为互联网的中心

　　Youku.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Victor Koo says he's tired of being asked whether his company, China's biggest online-video provider, is the nation's version of YouTube or Hulu. It's both and better, he says。

　　Koo is among dot-com executives gathering in Beijing today and tomorrow to sell the idea that Chinese online services from Youku to Tencent Holdings's QQ are catching up to the world and western companies will soon turn to China for innovation. Their edge in detecting trends: an Internet population of 420 million, more than the number of people in the US and Germany。

　　"The Internet's center of gravity is shifting toward China," said Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China in Beijing, a technology consultant. "China has almost double the number of US Internet subscribers. That concentration matters."

　　Some investors may already be ahead of the curve. Tencent and Baidu are larger than EBay Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. by market value. Alibaba Group Holding's Alibaba.com unit is also among the 10 biggest Internet companies globally by market capitalization。

　　Tencent expanded its QQ online-chat software to offer additional features that appeal to youths, according to an Internet analyst. QQ controlled 77 percent of China's instant-messaging market as of December, compared with 4.2 percent for Microsoft's MSN, according to researcher Analysis International。

　　Taobao.com, China's biggest online-shopping site, overtook San Jose, California-based EBay within three years of its founding in 2003 by waiving commissions from transactions between its users. The approach by Taobao appealed more to China's cost-conscious Internet users, according to James Hawkins, managing director at DGM Asia, which buys advertising from Internet companies in China。

　　While the number of so-called "netizens" trumps those of any other country, Chinese Internet companies have yet to become household names, according to BDA's Clark. "Tencent is among the largest Internet companies in the world but most people outside of China haven't even heard of it," said Clark. China also trails the US in revenue. In addition, China lags behind the US in terms of educational and social conditions to foster innovation, said Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting, a Beijing-based market research firm. Still, its Internet population guarantees China will impact the Web's future, he said。