Sun TV and Sina.com say the combination of their two companies will pull in a massive mainland audience. Observers feel the link-up has the air of a last gasp bid of two stragglers to stay in the game

INTERNET portal Sina.com trumpeted last week's share-swap tie-up with Sun Television Cybernetworks Holdings (Sun TV), saying the deal would allow it to 'extend its premier brand and programming to over 30 million households in Greater China'.

'In the fast-evolving market of convergence and consolidations in Greater China, Sina is always leading the way to bring its premier brand and high-quality subscriber-based services to the mass Chinese consumers,' its chief executive Daniel Mao said.

'By combining Internet portal with television, the two companies will leverage significant synergies and shorten the path to profitability.'

Even to the uninitiated, this gobbledegook has the ring of desperation.

An uncharitable view would see the Sina-Sun TV link-up not as the leveraging of synergies, but as two survivors of a shipwreck clinging to each other on the high seas.

Nasdaq-listed Sina last week said it would acquire 29 per cent of Sun TV from the Hong Kong-listed company's chairman, Yang Lan. It will pay with US$8 million in cash and about 4.6 million in new Sina shares, and so make Ms Yang the biggest shareholder in the Internet portal - now, in the fashion of the day, referred to as a 'media and Internet services company'.

Both companies have seen their share prices plunge. Sina's is a familiar story: its rise was premised on a Chinese online advertising bonanza that failed to materialise.