English Premiership leaders Arsenal launched a Chinese-language website here on Diesday in a bid to widen the club's global fan base and increase its support in the world's most populous country.

Manager Arsene Wenger said he hoped the new site, http://arsenal.tom.com, would turn "all" of China's 1.3 billion people into avid fans of the Gunners, who are unbeaten after eight league games.

"Of course you now have the largest population in the world and we would like to make them all Arsenal fans," Wenger said in a video message to the website launch ceremony here.

Arsenal arc following in the footsteps of Chelsea, who opened a similar site earlier this year, and reigning champions Manchester United, who are also keen to boost their profile in China.

United toured Asia in July and played two matches in China while and Chelsea are set to tour China next year.

Arsenal managing director Keith Edelman signed the joint venture agreement here under which Tom.Com hosts the website, will match the content of the club's English site. China’s leading sports ncwspaperDtan Sports Weekly will oversee the Chinese content.

Edelman said Arsenal expected. to double its Chinese fan base wi thin the next two years.

"We know we have about 50 million fans in the world that support Arsenal and we believe that about four million of them would sit in China," he said.

"But we hope that with these new venues with Tom.com and

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Titan Sports that we should be more than doubling that figure over the next 12 months. 24 months."

However Edelman said the club had no plans for the moment to match Chelsea and Manchester United with a pre-season Asian tour.

He said, however, that the Londoners were working on joint ventures in China along similar lines to the club's work in Thailand and Vietnam, where Arsenal run football clinics for local youths.

"We believe we will make a significant contribution to football in those countries as we hope to do in China." Edelman said.

"We are very excited about today and we' re very excited about the future in China."

Chelsea set up a partnership with Sina.com, one of China's top portals, in January for a China-hosted Internetsite.

Theclub is investing two million dollars a year to help finance training for Chinese leagues, and develop professional club management, marketing strategies and sports medicine.