The Hurun Report has published the top 50 names of this year's Hurun Rich List 2011. Liang Wen'gen, co-founder of heavy machinery company Sany, rose from fourth place to top the list this year with a wealth of $11billion, buoyed by China's economic boom. He edged last year's list-topper Zong Qinghou of drinks conglomerate Wahaha into second place. Zong has seen his wealth shrink from $12 billion to $10.7 billion following profit margin squeeze in the industry, this despite Wahaha chalking up an impressive 30% sales increase. Robin Li Yanhong of Baidu continued his rise on the list to finish at third place this year with a fortune of $8.8 billion. He was helped in no small part by Google's quasi-withdrawal from the Chinese market which allowed Baidu to consolidate its position in the online search market. more ›

Bill Gates and Baidu CEO Robin Li recently announced the joint launch of an anti-smoking initiative entitled “Alliance for Healthy China”. Their slogan “Say no to forced smoking" is meant to encourage smokers to be respectful of their surrounding and not “force” second hand smoke onto their immediate company. Along with educating the public, this campaign is meant to provide resources for current smokers to explore methods that could help them quit. more ›

There's been lots of rumours lately that literary bad boy and professional rally driver Han Han is going to write about Baidu's disrespect for copyright in his first column for the NYT. In his latest blog post, Han Han looks at all the victories that Baidu's been winning in court, and wonders aloud if CEO Robin Li's dad is Li Gang. Hilarious!

Yesterday, negotiations between several publishing industry representatives and Baidu broke down. In the early stages, Shen Haobo, Lu Jinbo and Hou Xiaoqiang had told me on various occasions that Baidu has been causing damage to the entire publishing industry, to which I responded: “Let’s sue them”. They then said several cases had been brought against them, none of which were won. Baidu has plenty of money and access, in effect they pretty much control the courts. They also have first rate public relations capabilities, so in addition they control what is being said about them by most media outlets. I sighed and wondered: “Could it be that Robin Li’s dad is Li Gang?” more ›

Reports of sightings of Facebook founder and newly-crowned Time Person of the Year Mark Zuckerberg in Beijing abound on the internet today. Twitter user @lhiver swears: "I kid you not, I saw Mark Zuckerberg while passing the Yonghegong Lama Temple this morning on my way to work." Sina Tech on Weibo reports: "Baidu employee Wang Mengchen took the following picture during lunch of Robin Li (Baidu founder) and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Looks like they were having a great time!"
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If you've ever wanted a nice breakdown of the wealthy upper crust of China, just refer to Forbes. The magazine has just released its China's 400 Richest list and it seems like the rich just can't stop getting richer in this country. more ›

• A crowd-sourced translation of The Lost Symbol: is this copyright infringement? [Danwei] "His last book, The Da Vinci Code, was wildly popular in China and propelled translations of his earlier novels onto bestseller lists as well. The latest thriller, which follows the further adventures of intrepid symbologist Robert Langdon, should sell well over here too. Once it's translated, that is. People's Literature Publishing House expects a Chinese edition to be on shelves sometime in 2010. Chinese Internet users can't wait that long, so Yeeyan, a collaborative translation website, has launched a project to crowd-source the translation of The Lost Symbol into Chinese. They've already posted the prologue and the first two chapters."
• Baidu CEO touts growth of China's search engine [Cnet News] "Baidu CEO Robin Li, on a rare visit to Silicon Valley Wednesday, explained the rise of his company's search engine in China before a group of students more interested in entrepreneurial tips than censorship. Li ended a trip to the U.S. Wednesday at Stanford University, speaking to a crowd of several hundred students about the lessons he learned shepherding Baidu through the first dot-com bust and growing it into the Google of China. Baidu has 76 percent of the Chinese search market, he said, which consists of 338 million Internet users: larger than the entire population of the U.S."
• 11 indicted over factory brawl in S China [Xinhua] "Eleven people involved in a toy factory brawl on June 26 that left two employees dead in south China's Guangdong Province have been indicted for intentional injury and group affray, procurators said Wednesday. Xiao Jianhua and four other suspects were indicted for intentionally assaulting people during the Xuri Toy Factory brawl, the Shaoguan Municipal People's Procuratorate said."

• China party scholar hints at Xi Jinping promotion [Washington Post] "A Chinese Communist official on Tuesday held out the possibility that Vice President Xi Jinping could still be promoted to a military position, in a step toward ultimately taking over the nation's top leadership post. Some media had speculated that Xi, who is expected to succeed President Hu Jintao in 2013, would be anointed vice chairman of the Central Military Commission at a party plenum last week, reinforcing his succession claim. However, the plenum closed last Friday with no word of any personnel changes."
• China opens media center for coverage of 60th National Day celebrations [Xinhua] "A media center was opened Tuesday for journalists covering celebrations commemorating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1. The center, in the Media Center Hotel, will operate until Oct. 2 and will be responsible for providing reception and services for media personnel, such as issuing press passes and organizing interviews. Zhu Shouchen, deputy director of the center, said they had so far received applications from more than 4,500 journalists in and outside the Chinese mainland."
• What China's Hu Would Really Like to Tell Obama [Time] "Summit meetings, in particular those with 20 heads of state in attendance, are usually scripted, staid affairs. That's especially true when these get-togethers involve Chinese President Hu Jintao, whose private persona varies little from his public style. As befits someone who is running the world's most populous country, he is intensely disciplined and extremely cautious. On Tuesday, he will meet one on one with U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City before heading off to Pittsburgh, Pa., for the G-20 summit on Sept. 24-25. This is what a more relaxed Hu might say to Obama, whose first major decision on trade was to slap a 35% tariff on tires produced in China — an action that generated a flurry of stories in the media about the possibility of a U.S.-China trade war..."

After two long years, the void left by the departure of Jerry Liu has been filled by telecommunications technologist Li Yinan. Li was the former Chief Technology Scientist at Huawei Technologies and oversaw the development of 3G mobile chipsets. more ›