When Charles Zhang, the founder of Chinese portal Sohu, bought ChinaRen in 2000, Xu stayed on for a few more years until 2005 when he rejoined Chen at Oak Pacific Interactive and worked on the social networking site Chen acquired in 2006, Xiaonei, later renamed Renren.
Jie Gan of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, Yan Guo of Peking University and Chenggang Xu of the University of Hong Kong conclude that the return on assets and profitability per employee for companies that have undergone partial share offerings is indistinguishable from those that were not privatised at all.