Joe Zhou, the partner who led the Beijing office of big-name venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, has left to set up his own venture capital firm.

Zhou had long wanted to start his own venture firm, so the move is not that much of a surprise, according to Asia Venture Capital Journal, which first reported the news (sorry, no link).

It’s not the first time U.S. venture firms have seen defections in China. DFJ was hit hard when two of its best partners defected to joined Sequoia Capital and Granite Global Ventures two years ago. It’s also a sign that the venture capital model can be difficult to scale outside of one’s home territory. Benchmark Capital, for example, had to cut ties with its European partnership last year, when that operation became successful enough to declare independence.

Zhou’s departure comes less than a year after KP opened its operations in China in April, when KP announced a $360 million fund for China, and announced teams in Beijing and Shanghai. Zhou, who had previously scored a hit by backing Chinese company Shanda while he was at a venture firm SAIF, was alone in KP’s office in Beijing, and was considered a “maverick,” according to the AVCJ. The Shanghai office of Kleiner has three partners, led by Tina Ju (middle in image above), who helped back Alibaba and Baidu. That team will stay put. So it’s not like Kleiner is falling apart over there.

The story was reported by Rebecca Fannin, who has followed the Chinese venture scene closely. She recently wrote a book called Silicon Dragon about the Chinese technology scene, which argues that China has moved from a copy-cat to true innovator mode. (Btw, it also has some good color about how Robin Li of Baidu and his co-founder almost failed with Baidu, the Chinese search engine that now is No.1 in that country.)

We tried to reach Kleiner for comment this evening, to no avail.

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