Today’s jump of as much as 4.18% in shares of eBay (EBAY) is being attributed (at least by the Wall Street Journal, subscription required) to an interview in The New York Times yesterday with eBay chief executive Meg Whitman in which the company is described as “Preparing to re-enter the China auction business.”

But it may be much ado about nothing.

CIBC analyst Paul Keung, travelling in China, says that the news is not news. “They said all this a year ago,” Keung said in a phone interview. “They’re not re-entering China, it’s just try, try again.”

In the interview, Whitman says the company’s partnership with Tom Online (TOMO), a vendor of cell-phone Internet applications and services in China, is slipping a few months but is still on track, with special measures being taken for the Chinese market such as holding money paid for auctions in escrow to prevent fraud. And the Times suggests the Tom Online partnership can help eBay where it previously failed in China:

Despite eBay’s previous failure in China, Ms. Whitman said the partnership with TOM Online, which owns 51 percent of the venture, might crack the increasingly wired Chinese market. We have a good shot at it, she said.

But “they’ve just outsourced their problems to Tom Online,” says Keung of the partnership. The problem in China continues to be that all listings for online auctions, at eBay or at competitors are free, which means “it’s going to take some time before the activity can be monetized,” says Keung. eBay may be able to make money off listings eventually, but it remains a challenge.

Keung has a $37 price target on eBay but rates the shares Hold based on slowing growth. “U.S. and Germany [sales] growth are slowing into the teens this year, on a year-over-year basis,” he says.

eBay shares have subsided a bit and are now up 2.31% at $31.85. Tom Online shares are up 1% at $13.67.

Previously:

Google: Checkout Adoption Rising, But Still Accepted By Only 13% Of Top 200 Web Retailers, June 18, 2007;

The Great E-Commerce Slowdown, May 22, 2007.