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The third-largest video site in China, 56.com, has been offline for nearly a month due to what most observers believe is government censorship. But that’s not stopping rivals from raising more funding.

Youku, approximately tied with Tudou as the largest video site in the country, has just closed a $30 million round led by private equity firm Maverick Capital, with participation from existing venture and private equity investors.

A much smaller rival, called ku6.com, has also raised $30 million from undisclosed investors, according to Pacific Epoch.

Neither Youku (homepage screenshot, above) and ku6.com appear to be at serious risk of being shut down due to censorship. The Chinese government introduced a new regulation last winter that required all online video sites to receive a license to legally operate that requires they be at least half-owned by a government entity.

Ku6 and many other smaller online video sites have received approval but Youku, Tudou and 56.com haven’t.

Youku has close connections to powerful media companies and investors in China. Besides an hour’s worth of downtime a month ago, it hasn’t had any issues, and most expect it to stay on the right side of local laws. Likewise, Tudou may be safe, according to one report, because it voluntarily went offline to clean objectionable content for a day in March, after being approached by government censors. Meanwhile, 56.com is still offline — some rumors of its shut-down included that it was showing videos of the recent Chinese earthquake that the government didn’t want to be public and that it was too slow to respond to government take-down requests.

Facebook, meanwhile, experienced unexplained downtime in China yesterday.

Ku6.com (homepage screenshot, below) received a $10 million from investors including Chinese internet conglomerate Baidu, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and DT Capital Partners in May of 2007. The company also raised another round sometime at the end of last year, separate from this latest round, according to Pacific Epoch.

Youku has raised a total of $50 million, including $10 million in debt, prior to this latest round, bringing the total raised to $80 million — near what Tudou has also raised. All existing investors in Youku participated in the round — showing the level of confidence everyone seems to be feeling despite the 56.com shutdown — and including Brookside Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital, and Chengwei Ventures.

In another sign suggesting Youku will stay live, it has announced content distribution deals with more than 100 traditional media organization including Shanghai TV, Beijing TV, Jiangsu TV, China Film Group, Huayi Music, Universal Music, EMI Music, and others. The company already syndicates regional Chinese television programs. As the Chinese government already regulates traditional media, these moves can only make the site look more legitimate to censors.

Youku, like Tudou, claims to be the largest site in the country. Citing third party reports from Chinese web measurement services like iResearch, Baidu user index and Data Center of China’s Internet, and others, Youku has says it is getting more than 100 million unique visitors per month with each user spends about 300 minutes per month on the site — although many in China questions the validity of third party data tracking in the country.

Also, operating a video site is expensive, anywhere. We’ve previously heard that Youku and Tudou are spending more than one million dollars per month on video infrastructure costs, so this funding should be enough to last them for more than a year as they continue to figure out sustaining business models. Youku’s funding today will also be used to build out its sales and marketing team, to help it start making more money, the company says.

With censorship out of the way, maybe, for most Chinese video sites, the twin issues of web traffic measurement and online video monetization are the monsters left for these companies to slay. Both are still large and unresolved problems in the Chinese internet world.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Topical Botox maker Revance gets $43M, option to be acquired by Medicis (release)
• Reva Medical draws $42M for resorbable stents (release)
• AccentCare raises $8M for senior home-care services (VentureWire, sub req’d)
• Light Dimensions aims for $6M for light-based skin treatment (VW)
• Carigent pulls in $2M for nanoparticle drugs (release)
• Celtic Pharma shoots for $1.5B in two drug-investment funds (VW)

Topical Botox developer Revance gets $43M, option to be acquired by Medicis — Mountain View, Calif.-based Revance Therapeutics, a developer of a Botox-like topical cream for wrinkle treatment and excessive sweating, raised $43.2 million in a third funding round. Medicis, a dermatology-products company in Scottsdale, Ariz., invested $20 million in the round and promised up to $5 million more in exchange for an option to acquire Revance or to exclusively license its botulinum-toxin drug.

The deal values Revance at approximately $200 million. Other investors in the round include Essex Woodlands Healthcare Ventures, Vivo Ventures, Technology Partners, Shepherd Ventures, and Palo Alto Investors. The Medicis options will extend through mid-stage human tests of the company’s botulinum-toxin drug.

Reva Medical draws $42M for resorbable stents — Reva Medical, a San Diego device maker focused on artery-opening stents that can be broken down and reabsorbed by the body, raised $42 million in a private financing. Cerberus Capital Management and Brookside Capital led the round, joined by Pequot Capital Management, Medtronic, Domain Partners and Group Outcome LLC.

Stents are used to prop open clogged arteries following a heart attack or other cardiovascular problems. The expandable mesh tubes, however, can also lead to additional problems down the line, such as the formation of scar tissue that can reblock vessels and even the creation of dangerous blood clots. Several companies are now pursuing stents that last just long enough for a previously clogged vessel to heal; we covered a Paris-based startup in this field, Arterial Remodeling Technologies, here.

Carigent pulls in $2M for nanoparticle drugs — New Haven, Conn.-based Carigent Therapeutics, a biotech developing new drugs based on nanoparticles that take aim at particular biological targets, raised $2 million in a first funding round. Saint Simeon Marketing and Investments provided the funding.

Carigent’s approach is to envelop drugs in a biodegradeable nanoparticle, which then will be coated with antibodies or other molecules designed to “anchor” the particle on or wthin certain cells or tissues. We’ve covered the company previously here.

Portola Pharmaceuticals, a South San Francisco, Calif., biotech aiming to develop treatments for blood clots and other heart-related problems, raised $70 million in a third round of financing dominated by late-stage and public-market investors.

Among new investors in the round were Brookside Capital; AllianceBernstein; Teachers’ Private Capital, the private investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan; Goldman Sachs, T. Rowe Price, IBTM and CIDC. They were joined by existing investors Abingworth, Alta Partners, Advanced Technology Ventures, Frazier
Healthcare Ventures, MPM Capital, Prospect Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures.

Portola plans to use the funding for additional clinical trials of its two leading drug candidates, both experimental blood thinners targeting different blood proteins that promote coagulation. PRT054021, an oral molecule that inhibits Factor Xa, showed promising signs in a recent mid-stage human test, and will advance into further clinical trials. Meanwhile, PRT060128, which prevents blood platelets from aggregating, has completed early trials and should move into mid-stage testing by the second half of 2007. Should they receive regulatory approval, both compounds would compete with blood thinners already on the market.

Portola aims to go public and may do so as early as next year, the company’s chief financial officer, Mardi Dier, told VentureWire (subscription required).