Interesting article in the Guardian, published earlier this month, about “Virtual China looks for real benefits”  by Victor Keegan:

"…virtual worlds able to support not millions or tens of millions but billions of avatars. When I looked puzzled, he said that people still did not realise how big a country China was. And he is right. It is tempting to dismiss all this as an Asian phenomenon with no implications for us. That would be a serious mistake. It is about the availability of broadband, not culture. The sky is no longer the limit. The world is changing."

"…It doesn't stop there. This site, now under construction, will have all the infrastructure (server farms, communication links, electricity, banking links, logistics etc) needed to make this the world's one-stop shop for consumers and producers. China, which is hosting a conference on the subject next month, wants companies around the globe to set up here - the likes of Cisco, IBM or western virtual worlds - to take advantage of state-of-the art communications, infrastructure and (for the moment) cheap wages. It could be a difficult proposition for many corporations to resist.

A friend of mine met Professor Lai recently at Virtual Worlds 2007 in San Jose - all of what is said in the Guardian article is probably true.