When Fang Xingdong accidentally came across people writing personal diaries and journals online in 2002, he recognized an opportunity of a lifetime. In retrospect, he still believes it is the single most important thing to ever happen in his life.

At the time China’s IT industry was wallowing in the mire of the IT bubble burst in 2000. Fang’s career as an analyst-turned-entrepreneur wasn’t doing much better. In the three years after 1999, he had to cut back the staff in his small business from 60 to less than 30, often having no money to pay salaries.

The 33-year-old businessman plunged headlong into the blogging concept, even coining a Chinese name, Bo Ke, or “plentiful guests,” to make it more localized. In August 2002, Fang founded China’s first blogging website, www.blogchina.com, and by the end of 2003 it was the largest Chinese blog service provider.

Fang’s farsighted vision was proved correct, as blogging fever has taken China by storm. According to Analysys International, a Chinese Internet, media and telecom industry consultancy, the number of bloggers in China reached 33.36 million by the end of September 2005, more than twice the 14.75 million at the end of 2004.

“Initially, in 2002, my idea was confined to creating a tailored website that my friends and I could enjoy. Blogging is first and foremost my hobby and something I love to do,” said Fang, now CEO of Bokee—he changed the blogchina name in July 2005.

Dr. Blog

Fang has been a keen observer of the Chinese IT industry for the last 10 years and his own successes and failures are directly linked to it. He was admitted by the prestigious Tsinghua University for a doctorate in 1996, majoring in electrical engineering, which he had studied for seven years at Xi’an Jiaotong University. Over the few years after 1996, he wrote extensively on the development of China’s IT industry, then in its infancy, and was recognized as the most influential IT analyst in China. In 1998, he wrote columns for five magazines simultaneously and would often churn out 4,000-word articles in two or three hours. When the wave of IT peaked in the late 1990s, Fang suspended his studies in electrical engineering and in 1999 co-founded China’s first professional IT consultancy. It was not long after that the IT industry went from hero to zero and Chinalabs limped along, struggling for survival, until Fang found his new hope in blogging.

At the end of June 2004, Fang filed an application to change his doctoral studies from electrical engineering to journalism, combining his academic studies with blogging, where his interest and future career prospects lie. Fang ruefully told Beijing Review that he is determined to complete his doctorate degree in mass commutation this year, after being addressed as Dr. Fang in this industry for 10 years.

“China’s 10-year IT industry history taught me that the first principle of entrepreneurship is to hold on,” Fang said. “To hold on does not guarantee success, but to succeed you must hold on.”

Number one

Despite Fang’s pioneering status in China’s blogging explosion, he has declined the title of “Father of Blogging in China.” He believes the intrinsic populist nature of blogging has made it impossible to find an authoritative blogging pioneer in China. “Anyone who dares to give himself such a crown will only be ridiculed by others,” Fang said.