• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 9, 2008

Youku.com, the biggest video sharing site in the Internet's second largest market - China - is approaching the kind of numbers being generated by the world's largest video sharing site, YouTube. Youku.com this morning said it has surpassed two significant Web traffic milestones, including registering more than 100 million daily video views during the week ending December 16, 2007. Youku had more than 12 million daily unique visitors in that week, according to estimates from Nielsen Online's Nielsen/NetRatings unit.

That's impressive 20-fold growth for a video sharing site that celebrated its first anniversary last month, and represents an increase of 30 million daily video views since just last October.

To put those numbers in perspective, YouTube had only just exceeded the 100 million daily video views milestone in October 2006, the month it was acquired by Google.

The data should help Youku.com in its positioning as the "YouTube of China," at a time when Chinese officials are clamping down on video sharing sites that are not sanctioned by the Chinese government, which has been trying to stem the exchange of pornography and political dissent over the Internet.

The positioning comes as big Western advertisers and agencies are focusing their attention on the Chinese marketplace, and Youku.com recently completed three rounds of venture financing totaling US $40 million from a group of investors including Brookside Capital, an affiliate of Bain Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital and Chengwei Ventures.