Li Yanhong (Robin Li), founder and CEO of Baidu Inc., operator of the world's most used Chinese language search engine, has been listed as one of the 50 Businesspersons of the Year in 2010 by Fortune magazine. Li ranks sixth on the list, the highest of Chinese people.

Li, 42, received a master's degree in computer science from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1994. After working at search engine pioneer Infoseek in Silicon Valley, he returned to China and founded Baidu in 1999. NASDAQ-listed Baidu has 73 percent of the Chinese market and is the third largest independent search engine in the world.

Fortune said Baidu is poised to overtake Yahoo as the world's second largest search engine after Google.

"When I founded Baidu, I don't expect a search engine will bring about so much profit. Now I don't need more money, but what I pursue now is making my products more user-friendly, which is the motivation of my daily work," said Li.