Shares in Baidu.com - "China's Google" - shot up more than 250 per cent in New York yesterday, in one of the most spectacular stock market debuts since the height of the dotcom mania of the late 1990s.

At the initial public offering price, Baidu's American depositary receipts were offered at 540 times historical earnings. Google, which owns a 2.6 per cent stake in Baidu, trades at about 74 times earnings.