China's leading Internet search engine Baidu.com made a dazzling Wall Street debut on Friday with its shares more than quadrupled. 

The Beijing-based company's shares closed at US$122.54 on the Nasdaq, a 354 percent gain from its initial public offering price. That represented the biggest one-day gain since the final days of the dot-com bubble when IPOs regularly soared.

However, its chairman Robin Li said his company would rather focus on its long-term interests than its day-to-day stock market performance.

"Baidu is the leading search engine in China, what we care most about is providing the best search experience for our Chinese users. I would like to spend more time on the execution of operations, and I think the interests of our shareholders will be best served in this way."

Named after an ancient Chinese poem, Baidu was set up five and half years ago by two US-educated men, and the world's No.1 search engine Google has more than 2 percent stake in the company.
 
(CRI August 7, 2005)