It’s no secret that Google would like more of a foothold in the growing Chinese Internet market. Reports were flying last week that Google was looking to acquire Chinese companies and planned to invest heavily into the Asian market.

Reuters is reporting that Google has purchased a stake in Chinese social network Tianya.cn. While Google won’t confirm exactly how much of the Chinese company it has purchased, reports and estimates range anywhere from 10 - 60%.

In response, a couple of Tianya properties have launched today using Google technology:

• Wenda is a Google-powered Q&A site running on Google services
• Laiba is a Google-powered social network

And in similar, but unrelated, news, Google also launched a Chinese Blog Search site. According to Google Blogoscoped, the domain for the Chinese Blog Search has been available for quite some time. But today the site began to house an actual working version of the Google Blog Search in Chinese.

Google hasn’t fared as well overseas as it has in The States. In China, for example, Google runs a distant 2nd behind Baidu.com in the race for search dominance. In fact, Baidu’s market share in Chinese search is said to be more than twice that of Google’s.

Google hopes investments in China can help it shrink that gap.