CNET: China starts its search engine game
CNET: China Web alliance takes on Google

Furthering the aims of a China-backed, 300-site consortium formed to displace Chinese citizens' reliance on Western search engines, Huicong International launched a specialized tool covering 200 million Chinese language pages and incorporating special pinyin (a westernized Chinese script) tools.

CNET reports that the Chinese site's CEO said that, with the new pinyin tools, "it is unnecessary for search users with poor English to remember Web addresses for Google and Sina sites."

Last year, Google found that the Chinese government had been selectively blocking the search engine, especially during politically tumultuous times.