When talking about IT, China is for many an exotic curiosity. Although many of the products that get into our PCs are "Made in China", this country is still regarded as an emergent market.

It took a battle between two heavy-weight IT players to make us realize that there are 100 million Chinese Internet surfers, of which 30% benefit from broadband connections.

And if you think that this figure is unimpressive, you should take into consideration that China has a population of 1,290 million. When you compare figures, you realize that the 100 million are actually insignificant compared to the potential increase.

During the cold war, there was cynical joke that said that if China should decide to invade Russia, it wouldn't need any weapons, sending 1 million souls over the border being more than enough. You shouldn't think that the 100 million Chinese are joined daily by another million, but in a few months there will be at least 500,000 new users.

And we are talking about users with a different mentality and who speak a different language than English. And if you're planning on staying on the Internet 10 years from now, perhaps it would be a good idea to start learning Chinese, because English might become a secondary language.

And another thing. Imagine you are the CEO of a company that deals with online advertisingl; for every clicked keyword you get 2 cents. Multiply that by 100 million and by 20 million and keep in mind that we are talking about a daily activity.

Now think about the Microsoft-Google lawsuit. Don't you think that the truth is somewhere beyond Kai-Fu Lee?