Inspired by artists and writers, some 16 million Chinese bloggers now put their thoughts, hopes and fears into online diaries and journals, in a fever of sharing never seen in the country before. Along with this surge of interest, the Internet industry has regained its prosperity after it recovered in 2005. Observers are calling this the “second spring of China’s Internet.”

As with the first surge of Internet fever between 1998 and early 2000, today cyberspace is awash with financing, speculation and quick money transactions. Those involved, it seems, are casting all caution to the winds.

Right now Internet elites disregard words like “irrational exuberance,” which is what former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said about the Internet industry stock market, with its booming technology sector, several years ago. In their eyes, development of the Internet itself is an irrational process, where transmigration of fortunes has many uncertainties. Moreover, this industry never lacks an enterprising and innovative spirit, which is especially prominent in China’s Internet development.

In the early days, most of the Chinese pioneering Internet enterprises were imitating the business models of the U.S. Internet industry. After a decade’s development, China’s Internet industry is emerging in its own unique format, profiting from the likes of short message services and online games. Although much disputed, blogging is among the new forms of potentially profitable developments. However, blogging is not as popular in the United States, where there are no comparable listed companies.

Large Internet companies have faced some difficulties in localizing their operations. Bearing this in mind, Google, the world’s biggest search engine which entered China one year ago, has come up with a specific Chinese name, Gu Ge. The name means “harvest song,” and will make the company more accessible to Chinese netizens.

In addition, Google, along with other foreign Internet companies entering China, needs to observe the administrative rules laid down by the Chinese Government and accept that censoring by China’s firewall is part of the modus operandi.

Apparently the large and lucrative Internet market in China convinced shareholders of Google and Yahoo to consider the censorship worthwhile. China has 111 million netizens, second only to the United States, while in its Internet industry, profit models of portals, search engines and e-commerce are not completely established, with some just being started.

However, no Internet operations can guarantee that they can make profits. For several decades, most of those employed in the Internet area have been accustomed to the ups and downs of this fluid industry, an industry people still know little about. Our thinking can’t control the development of the industry. Who can say what the real value of current Internet companies is, and facing a new age of prosperity, how confident are we of their success? Answers to these questions and what the Internet is facing in its “second spring” will no doubt emerge sooner rather than later.