Top Chinese search engine Baidu to build Int'l headquarters

World's largest Chinese search engine Baidu.com signed Monday an agreement with Shenzhen city government to build its international headquarters in this boomtown of southern Guangdong Province.

The entrance of Baidu.com will boost Shenzhen's development and enhance Baidu's influence in southern China and even southeastern Asia, said Wang Rong, Shenzhen's acting mayor, at the signing ceremony.

Timetable and budgets are to be made after the municipal government, which is very supportive to online service enterprises, specifies land allotment for the project, said Baidu's president Li Yanhong.

Baidu, accounting for 70 percent of China's search engine market, will also base its south China headquarters and research and development center in Shenzhen, and deepen its cooperation with the city in on-line service, Li said.