Chinese smartphone game publisher Yodo1 reported Wednesday that it has raised $5 million in a Series A round led by SingTel Innov8, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore-based SingTel Group. Additional funding came from existing investor Chang You Fund. Beijing-based Yodo1 raised $2 million in seed funding last June from Chang You Fund and an undisclosed amount from RTM Asia in February 2012.

Venture investing in mainland China fell 42% during the fourth quarter as companies raised $854 million, Dow Jones VentureSource reports. Completed deals declined 52% to 39.

Companies last year raised about $26 billion in IPOs on Shenzhen’s Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) board and on ChiNext, its Nasdaq-style start-up market — more than double the new listings on Nasdaq and two-thirds more than London, Thomson Reuters data show.

All of a sudden, Chinese Internet companies are facing a perplexing problem, Reuters reports: They don’t have enough capital, or a place to find it, in some cases.

Beijing-based WestSummit Capital announced that it has backed Chinese optical lens provider Union Optech, which develops lenses and sensors used in security cameras, smartphones, and other mobile devices. Terms of the funding were not disclosed. Beijing-based WestSummit also invests in U.S. companies from its location in Palo Alto, Calif. PRESS RELEASE WestSummit Capital Expands Mobile Ecosystem Portfolio [...]

B5M said it raised $7.1 million in Series A investment led by Oak Investment Partners and Giosis Holdings. The Chinese social shopping search engine will use the money to develop its website and for marketing. Allan Kwan and Youngbae Ku will join the board. PRESS RELEASE CHINESE SOCIAL SHOPPING SEARCH ENGINE B5M SECURES $7.1 MILLION [...]

It is hard not to be gloomy with the broad challenges facing investing and venture investing in particular. The European sovereign debt crisis is like a flu that won’t go away. Domestic economic growth may be picking up, but it remains uninspiring, especially with another European recession on the horizon. Finally, unemployment is intractably high, [...]

Sequoia Capital‘s China team and Chinese angel fund Zhenfund have joined forces to start a new $30 million seed fund, according to TechNode news site in China. The fund has a 50/50 split in dollars and the Renmindi to enable it to invest in Chinese registered and variable interest entity companies. Sequoia did not issue [...]

A group of Silicon Valley VCs are betting that homegrown shopping networks will keep on growing in China. GGV Capital, Sequoia Capital, BlueRun Ventures and Zero2IPO recently, and quietly, invested a Series C round in Meilishuo, which operates a Chinese shopping social network and microblog for women. As part of the funding, Ray Hu, vice [...]

Intel Capital has accelerated its Chinese investing this year and says activity could increase again next year. The venture arm of the computer chipmaker anticipates completing 12 investments in China this year, according to Richard Hsu, managing director of Intel Capital China. Part of the reason for the boost is the growing maturity of the [...]