Yinan Li was previously chief telecommunications scientist and vice president at Huawei Technologies but left the company last year. At Huawei he oversaw development of 3G chipsets. He has also been CEO of Harbour Networks.

Former CTO Jerry Liu left Baidu in December 2006 for personal reasons, according to Chinese media reports, and joined rival search engine Tianwang in early February the following year. Liu was a founder of Tianwang in 1999 and left the start-up to join Baidu, according to local press reports.

The appointment of a CTO is the latest in a succession of new faces at the top of the company. In March Jennifer Li joined Baidu as chief financial officer from General Motors' GMAC and a month later a new chief operating officer, Peng Ye, was appointed.