It turns out that Shanda Interactive (NASDAQ:SNDA) doesn't have to outrun the bear. It just needs to outrun the slower market. The Chinese online gaming specialist posted a rather lackluster quarterly report last night. Revenues were off by a quarter over last year's showing. Profits unbuckled by a third. However, earning the equivalent of $0.24 a share on $50.7 million can be pretty sweet when Wall Street is looking for you to earn all of $0.06 a share on $42.8 million in revenues.

Though there was sequential strength at Shanda, it wsn't enough to herald a turnaround cry. It should, however, silence cynics who figured that the company's recent move -- to make some of its older games free of charge and make that up in ad revenues -- would lead it on a downward spiral. The company generated $6.2 million in profits from government incentives and favorable currency translation, but even without that Shanda would have smacked bottom-line targets pretty good. Still, Shanda continues to yield market share to growing rivals like NetEase (NASDAQ:NTES) and The9 (NASDAQ:NCTY).

Shanda has turned to the West for lifelines. It is working on Disney (NYSE:DIS) licensed games and it is teaming up with Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) in China for digital applications on its EZ Pod home computer application. So Shanda isn't going down with a fight. And if you go by the company's second-quarter results, it may not be going down much at all.

Shanda -- like NetEase -- is a Rule Breakers recommendation. Want to learn more about NetEase, Shanda, and the other promising growth stocks that the newsletter has been recommending? Go for a free trial subscription to explore the newsletter service for the next 30 days.

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Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz believes in the sector but he does not own any of the companies mentioned in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.