China VC investments double in qtr to $480M; What bubble?

China investments into start-ups are booming, and a lot of the money is flowing there from Silicon Valley firms.

A couple of years ago, lots of people began speculating whether there might be a Chinese investment bubble in the works. If there is a bubble, it is taking a while to pop (like a lot of bubbles tend to do; think 1999 in the U.S.), because investments doubled in the second quarter, compared to the same quarter the year before.

The caveat, though, is that statistics in China are still sketchy. Also, note that investment levels still haven’t cracked record levels from a few years ago.

Here’s what the folks at research firm VentureOne sent us yesterday:

Venture capital deal flow to companies headquartered in mainland China reached a high point with 54 deals occurring in the second quarter of 2006, according to the inaugural China Quarterly Venture Capital Report released by Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young.

At the half-year point there have now been 85 deals and $757.9 million invested in China, indicating investment in 2006 is likely to handily surpass the levels of the past two years, thus proving the country’s progress in maturing as a venture capital ecosystem.

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