How Baidu Won China

Many CEOs have admirers. Robin Li—the 41-year-old, American-educated chief executive officer of the Chinese search engine Baidu—has a fan club. And each year at the Baidu (BIDU) World conference in Beijing, the members of the Robin Li fan club come out to get close to the object of their worship.

On a late morning in September, about 30 college-age kids wait expectantly outside the China World Hotel in downtown Beijing. When Li emerges from a dark blue sedan, the fan club mobs him, waving signs and screaming his name while Li poses for pictures with a tight, uncomfortable smile before darting into the building to rehearse his keynote address. "Robin Li is my idol," says Yan Huifeng, a student from Sichuan University in Chengdu. Liu Zhiqiang, a student at Beijing's Renmin University of China, says: "He is handsome and very intelligent and outstanding."