When Prodigy, the United States on-line service provider, launched its service in Shanghai in April, it was a milestone in the opening up of the mainland's Internet market to foreign companies.
The world's largest on-line service, America Online, does not have a mainland presence. Nor does Microsoft Network, which displaced Prodigy as the second-largest on-line service in the US after the autumn merger of AOL and CompuServe.
Indeed, among Prodigy's rivals in providing on-line service, only CompuServe can be found in China, offering network services for multinational corporations through a partnership with Ji Tong, the telecommunications company owned by the Ministry of Electronics Industry. Unlike Prodigy, however, CompuServe does not offer regular dial-up Internet service.
For political and economic reasons, China has kept a tight leash on the Internet. While the Beijing authorities are worried about the polluting effects of the uncontrolled inflow of Western cultural information, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), which operates most of the nation's telecommunications - and hence, Internet - is more concerned with maximising profits.
With the Internet, 'the MPT wants to get a lot of revenues', Greg Caressi, a telecommunications analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said.
So why Prodigy? And then, why China? Go back to May 1996, when Prodigy was being sold by former co-owners IBM and Sears, a US department store. Subscriber growth had stalled at a million users in the US. Telecoms such as AT&T and regional companies were starting to offer Net access, squeezing profit margins for established firms.