Chinese to create media giants in near future

Let’s face it: anything the Chinese dream up these days ends up being humongous. And now that they are turning their attention to media, heaven help the rest of the planet. This, unsurprisingly, will not be your typical media company scenario where a couple of flaky entrepreneurs gather in small, smoke-filled backrooms dreaming of better futures and world domination. It will be a bunch of bureaucrats meeting in China’s state council executing the plans adopted at the latest Party congress, building a better media future for China and, yes, total world domination. They have already established that they have no media empires that would suit China’s new image and the respect it commands around the world, and are now about to act on it. Not all will be that bad, though: foreigners will be allowed to own chunks of these companies and with those, though difficult to believe, would come a gradual relaxation of repressive media laws and censorship. The first company that will be promoted to stardom, state-owned Shanghai Media Group, should soon be able to stand on its own against Viacom, Fox or Bloomberg. TDM will not bet against that scenario.
