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By CNET Asia Staff, 31 October 2003 10:05

NEWS "Online games are the business letting me easily earn money, even if I did nothing but rest lying on the bed," joked the man named China's richest by US business magazine Forbes.

Thirty-year-old Ding Lei, also known as William Ding, is the head of China internet portal NetEase.com. Brisk trading of China Web properties on the US Nasdaq technology board has boosted Ding's wealth to $900m, according to a Xinhua agency report.

He owns 52 per cent of shares in the company, which, like other high-riding China portals, makes most of its money from online gaming and PC-to-phone SMS.

Lu Benfu, director of Internet Research Center with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was quoted as saying "China's first three most popular Internet portals, namely Sina, Sohu and NetEase are closely connected with wireless business."

Almost half of NetEase's income comes from mobile services. However, according to an Asian Wall Street Journal report, new government restrictions on mobile services offered by China Net portals could stifle income in months to come.

After a bumpy first two years marked by losses and changes in top management, in the third quarter of this year NetEase roped in a net income of $10m, with revenue nearly doubling to $18m thanks to online gaming.

China had 68 million internet users as of the end of June, 8.9 million more than six months ago, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). The number of China's net users now constitute 5.3 per cent of its 1.3 billion population.