In 1990 he returned to Hong Kong, and four years later Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, approached him about a Net strategy for China. At the time, the Net was barely on the radar screen in the US, much less in China, and Yip's high school pals were busy getting rich off Hong Kong real estate and investment banking. With Yip at the helm, though, Chinadotcom spun off from Xinhua's China Internet and went public on the US Nasdaq in July 1999. The stock's been a wild roller coaster ride ever since, but Yip says his pan-Asian portal operator and Web consultancy is built for the long run. Editor in Chief Steve Mollman shared tea with Yip in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.
Japan is probably the most sophisticated Internet market, particularly in the area of wireless.
And we'll be taking advantage of what we've done already in the past 12 months. We have a good foundation, with close to a hundred people. I'd like to see us increase the head count and market presence. We have a number of investments. We have some of the strongest expertise in the wireless Internet, starting from working with suppliers and operators such as Nokia, Motorola, and Siemens.