According to The Daily Deal, Beijing-based investment banking boutique, Rong International Investment Management Co. Ltd. has agreed to invest as much as $17 million of venture capital into China-training.com, the country's largest online corporate training provider.

For the record, China's burgeoning training market has lured many large foreign training institutions, including GM Healthcare, Siemens Management School and HP Business School.

Rong's investment, to be paid in tranches over a three-year period, represents the company's return to VC investing following a series of losses in the late 1990s, when it was a representative office for unnamed American and Swiss private equity backers. Rong in 2000 restructured into a Chinese corporation, giving it more flexibility, and now claims an investment budget of as much as $241 million a year from those same undisclosed backers.

"The venture capital environment in China has changed dramatically in the past few years," said Rong president Joel Sun. "We've seen startups not just with strong ideas but also with the ability to make real profits."

The investment in China-training.com, which also provides corporate-training courses to Chinese companies, was the second by Rong since 2000. It agreed in July 2004 to put $5 million into Beijing-based Swisscn Group, an e-commerce and clients resources data-mining company.

Founded in 2000 by five management professionals led by chief executive Liang Bin, China-training.com broke even in its early days and has been reinvesting profits into business expansion.

Rong's financing could help China-training.com lay the foundation for an offshore IPO by 2008 on an undetermined stock exchange.