Joost launches a Chinese version today as a joint venture with TOM Online, the Chinese media conglomerate that’s majority-owned by Joost investor Li Ka-shing. TOM is providing local advertising and content — some 16,000 hours of programming from CCTV, China Record Corporation, BTV Media, and others — while Joost is providing the technology.

We had recently commented that Joost’s investors could barely be nice to it in their public remarks, so it’s good to see one of them chipping in to help it out. Joost has said it will soon be adding a web version of its Internet TV software, but it looks like the Chinese version is still a download.

The Chinese P2P software market actually seems to be lucrative and vibrant, as compared to the situation in the United States — and also the Chinese video portal market — as Janko reported this weekend. So good for Joost for seeing the opportunity, but it might be a little late to this game. PPLive, which told us it was profitable, had 24 million active users in May and roughly 23 million RMB ($3.4 million) in revenue in the first half of the year, according to a report by iResearch. PPStream, PPFilm and UUSee also had significant traffic and revenue.