In the frenzy of the Shanghai morning rush hour, Ben Tsiang is calm and composed. The executive vice president of product development for China's largest Web portal, Sina, is a seasoned veteran of the Internet boom and navigates startups as deftly as he does the traffic around his company's financial headquarters. "Ten years ago, people here didn't know what the Internet could do for them," says Tsiang. Now, Internet companies are helping Chinese users "leapfrog to the leading edge of technology and become even more advanced than the top of the pyramid in the U.S."

Tsiang, in his mid-30s, is the face of a new generation of developers in the world's fastest-growing Internet community. Historically, sources of news and information for Chinese citizens have been limited to state-run TV and radio. Tsiang and his peers have made their names creating homegrown Web browsers, portals, and search engines that offer more in-depth content and services than can usually be found on Chinese versions of American websites.