Our planet’s made up of two major landmasses: the Americas and this massive Afro-Eurasia “thing”. (Yep. Isn’t Africa nearly joined up?) At present, there’s a bit of continent-wise “yin-yang” in that the more 2.0 parts of Terra is in the Americas (Silicon Valley) and what’s probably consider-able as “northwest Afro-Eurasia” (Western and Central Europe).

But man, Afro-Eurasia is huge. And if we focus “just” on Eurasia, the fun’s all out west. What about the east? China? Wait up. We’re looking at the next Silicon Valley. See, there’s a reason that Beijing’s Silicon Valley, Zhongguancun, has three Subway stations. Increasingly, IT is becoming more and more it (pardon the pun) here in China.

China can either be equated with “copycat” in the sense of sharing the same first letter (bad idea) or “creativity” (good idea). Don’t let the Shanzhai iPods and iPads scare you. If you wanted to see the kind of creativity that defines China, you’d want to take a good look at CHINICT. You might go home on the second day shaking your head — as in why you didn’t enter this emerging new Silicon Valley anytime sooner.

Last year we had a stellar lineup, with the legendary @kaiserkuo moderating the event and Daniel Wu putting on a star appearance — but that underlined the whole thing. What about the creativity? The talent? Microsoft’s brave new North Pole video and new directions for the Redmond Giant? @thijsjacobs and Juice outside the conference hall, along with a lot of other revolutionary apps and companies making the difference?

If you thought that was all, get a load of the truly kick-ass lineup this year. Kai-Fu Lee (of Google fame). 金玉米 (that’s Jeremy Goldkorn). Nigel Burton. David Wolf. Kaiser Kuo. Elliott Ng. The bigs, both local and global. And look at that ticker on CHINICT.org — a who’s who of partners. Blackberry. Sina. The Wall Street Journal. Alibaba. Microsoft. That’s just part of the dynamite.

We are envisioning the masses descending at the Crowne Plaza Parkview Wuzhou Hotel, where the event takes place May 27 and 28, 2010. Having read this post, you’re probably going to head onto Expedia or places like eLong just to get to the Jing for this event. Wait — it gets better. You could be here. For free.

Surreal.

Nope, it’s real. From CHINICT.org:

The conference will sell out, but we understand that some people just can’t afford the ticket price, plus travel if you don’t live in or near Beijing. So today we’re giving out five free tickets to the conference. That’s over $10 000 worth of tickets that we can give away thanks to our sponsors.

Here’s how to get a ticket: Just fan the CHINICT Facebook page – and then retweet this post, and make sure to include the #CHINICT hashtag. The contest ends at noon California time on Monday May 17th and the winners will be selected at random at that time, and then contacted for further details. Anyone in the world is eligible, as long as you can make your way to Beijing and take care of your accommodation once there.

Okkie, folks. On your Facebooks, retweet, go.

(Oh yeah — and we’ll be there at CHINICT. By the way, this post will start our continuing coverage of this year’s event.)