Venture capital in China dips first time in over 2 years

"Venture capital investment in the mainland recorded the first quarterly decline in more than two years, as the government's new requirement on mergers and acquisitions started to take toll.
First-quarter investment fell 5% from a year earlier to US$343.5 million, the first year-on-year decrease since the third quarter of 2004, according to a survey by Ernst & Young and Dow Jones.
The number of deals has dropped from 40 to 36, it said.
The new rules required companies to list in foreign markets within a year after they set up offshore entities, a difficult task for venture capitalists that tended to need three to five years to make a firm suitable for a listing, said Partridge. "