AOL launched a Chinese-language portal focused on Taiwan Sunday, part of its bid to increase the number of international AOL portals to 30 by year-end.

The Dulles, Va., Internet company now hosts two Chinese language portals, including one launched in the U.S. two years ago aimed at Chinese speakers in the country.

AOL does not yet have a portal aimed at China. In 2001, the company created a joint venture with Legend Group, now called Lenovo, to jointly invest $100 million in a Chinese Web portal, called FM365.com. The effort never got off the ground and the joint venture ended in 2004.

More recently, the company has worked with portal partner Tencent in China. The two companies scuffled briefly over Tencent's use of the Web sites oicq.com in China and its similarity to the ICQ domains owned by the icq.com messaging software site AOL acquired in 1998. In March, 2000, an arbitrator ruled that Tencent should hand the oicq.com domain and related sites over to AOL. By that time, Tencent had already acquired 0icq.com and related names.

The Chinese company offers the most popular free instant messenger software in China.

AOL's new Taiwan portal offers users most of what they can expect from the U.S. edition of AOL, including local news, entertainment and finance information, free e-mail and instant messaging, and Chinese-language search and video search via Truveo.com. New content and features will be added in coming months, the company said in a statement.

The Taiwan portal, www.aol.tw, brings to 18 the number of international portals AOL has launched.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.