Just how big is the Internet opportunity in China?

Maybe building your business in China isn't as important as we once thought?

Leading up to the Summer Olympics last year, everyone was talking about the enormous economic opportunity in China. A couple dozen of BC's technology companies jumped on the bandwagon and headed off to Beijing for an International Business Summit that promised to help them build their business in China.

Statistics lauding the growth of the Internet in China have become so commonplace as to inspire yawns, despite breathless press reports of hundreds of millions of Chinese going online and signing up for the ‘net.  With the Chinese Government declaring that their internet population surpassed the US last year, it would seem that the real opportunity for expansion and growth online is not in the West, but somewhere behind the Great Firewall of China. Cue the ads for Chinese Web Hosting, Chinese Industry Liaisons, and the omnipresent legions of Chinese “business agents”.

Now there seems to be some questions arising about just how big the opportunity is in China - at least with regards to their growing Internet population.

Vancouver's Ian Bell covered the topic in detail last week and opened the debate on Chinese Internet proliferation.