Developing in a striding manner

I should stand in the corner with my hands on my head for making fun of other people's English. With schoolboy French and kindergarten Chinese to my name, who am I to poke fun?

However....as China Economic Net chooses to illustrate their posts with dodgy bikini shots of Jessica Biel (shame on you all for clicking through that link), I'll treat them as fair game. Today's article on e-commerce payment systems tells us that " the third party electronic payment industry in China has been developing in a striding manner". It goes on to tell us that, while 50 or more Chinese companies are engaged in this business, that 80% of the market is controlled by the top three:

1. Alipay.com
2. tenpay.com
3. Chinapay.com

It goes on to note that "In 2007, the trading volume in the third party payment market broke through RMB100 billion yuan, more than doubled year on year and thus continuing to maintain a growth rate over 100 percent for five consecutive years".

There's lots of intereting detail in there and, if that all gets a bit much for you, they also link to the story about how "American supermodel Marisa Miller has knocked actress Lindsay Lohan from the top of men magazine Maxim's list of the 100 hottest women in the world".

Glory be. We wouldn't want to take ourselves too seriously now would we. I was sore tempted to post the picture of Jessica Biel but thought that would be cheaper traffic-generating ruse than writing the word "sex" in the labels. We'll leave that to China Economic Net.