By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai Published: 11:31AM BST 04 Sep 2009  Kaifu Lee wrote in his blog that his next move will be to create a platform for young Chinese.  Mr Lee, 47, the president of Google Greater China, will leave the company in mid-September, the company said.  He is planning to shortly announce the creation of a new venture capital which will tap the potential of Chinese entrepreneurs.  "My next move is to create a platform for young Chinese. I want to be actively involved in the work and to have full control of it," he wrote, on his popular blog.  Mr Lee said Google had offered to renew his contract, but that he felt he was at the right stage in his life to leave.  In response to Mr Lee's departure, Google said it would promote two executives to split his job. Boon-Lock Yeo will take over engineering responsibilities while John Liu will head business and operational responsibilities.  The company also said it would aggressively hire staff and try to double its Chinese salesforce in the next six months.  Google China has had a difficult year and has seen both Google.com and Google.cn blocked more than once by the Chinese government. Youtube, Google's video-sharing service, has been blocked since March.  Communist Party internet regulators have publicly warned Google to censor all pornography from its searches, while turning a blind eye to any lurid material available through Baidu, Google's Chinese competitor.  Meanwhile, Chinese intellectuals have criticised Google for giving into Chinese censorship demands, although a study by the Open Net Initiative revealed that the American company censors around a third fewer terms than Baidu.  Baidu has around 63pc of the Chinese internet search market, while Google has 33pc, according to iResearch, a Chinese research firm.  In a bid to break Baidu's dominance, Mr Lee is rumoured to have submitted new marketing strategies just a few weeks ago. In his final interview as head of Google China, he told the Telegraph that the company would invest in "substantial marketing, everything from bus shelter and subway ads to TV spots and internet advertising".  He added: "We have better searches, more accurate and fresher results and more variety." Google calls itself "Gu Ge" in China, which means "song of the harvest of grain."  One source who knows Mr Lee said his departure had "absolutely nothing to do" with Google's recent woes, and suggested that he had been tapped by partners to run an investment fund because of his strong links to Chinese universities and his knowledge of emerging talent.  "If you are a venture capital fund and you want to have someone in the know, it would be hard to find someone who is in a better position," he said.  Google hired Mr Lee from Microsoft in 2005 and was sued for poaching him away. Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, testified in court that Mr Lee was "one of the top two" people influencing Microsoft's China strategy.
The head of Google in China, Kaifu Lee, has quit the company abruptly after    several turbulent months of clashes with the Chinese government.