Chinese newspapers on the way up

With all the controversy over the Chinese clampdown on coverage in Tibet,I have just read Tom Mitchell's interview with Dai Yuqing in yesterday's FT.

Dai is a Chinese media mogul who overseas 19 newspaper and magazines in the country,including the Guangzhou Daily which has one of the largest circulations in the world.Its success has been market driven unlike many publications which rely on Communist party members buying up copies.

Interestingly he makes the point that

If your papers [in the west] were government-backed no one would read them," he says. "Here it is the opposite. No one would believe us if we weren't government-backed. Our reporters are able to sit in internal government meetings and read government files. It's a special characteristic of China's newspaper industry."

He is described as a career journalist and has scooped his rivals by getting interviews with people such as Alan Greenspan and Chris Patten.

And the Chinese press may well be going the opposite way of its Western counterparts

"While western newspapers are cutting their editorial budgets, we are increasing ours. We encourage reporters to travel and get their own stories. We want to show our readers that we have the determination to enhance the content of the newspaper

He is also confident that the paper captures the youth market,youngsters use theinternet purely for entertainment,they get their news from papers.