ARTICLE: China Yearns to Form Its Own Media Empires, By DAVID BARBOZA, New York Times, October 4, 2009

The slippery slope begins ...

SHANGHAI -- China plans to spend billions of dollars in the next few years to develop media and entertainment companies that it hopes can compete with global giants like the News Corporation and Time Warner, and will in the process loosen some of its tight control of these industries.

An ambitious plan, set forth in guidelines last week by China's State Council, envisions the creation of entertainment, news and culture companies with a market orientation and with less government backing. China, in short, would like to consolidate its industry into companies resembling Bloomberg, Time Warner and Viacom, analysts say.

"There appears to be a feeling at the highest levels of government that they need a media machine commensurate to the rising status and power of China," says Jim Laurie, a former ABC News correspondent who teaches at Hong Kong University and recently met with Chinese state broadcasting executives.

As usual, greed and ambition overcome the desire for control.

Does this signal any sudden shift? Of course not. With the good (allowing outside financing) comes the careful (control of news media will remain with the gov for the foreseeable future).

But guess what? Media conglomerates tend to be defined by their flagship news organizations, so to truly compete, China will eventually need to de-ghetto-ize its news media.