[lit-ideas] Re: Yahoo! Traitors with Clinton Sidebar
- From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 15:19:49 -0400
Here's the fruit of some of Clinton's and Bush's laissez faire, and
Yahoo!'s complicity. Note the reference to Clinton in paragraph
nine. -EY
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chinamedia21sep21,0,6419134.story?coll=la-home-business
China Gets Tougher on Foreign Media
# Recent rules hinder entry into the market by Disney and others
amid rapid industry growth.
By Don Lee, Times Staff Writer
SHANGHAI — After presiding over the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland
last week, Walt Disney Co. President Robert Iger headed straight to
Beijing to meet Liu Yunshan, chief of the Communist Party's powerful
Propaganda Department.
Disney declined to say what the two men discussed, but it's a good
bet that Iger, who will become chief executive Oct. 1, renewed his
case for the Disney Channel in China, and that once again he was
told to wait. Disney has been waiting since 2003 for a broadcasting
license from Beijing so it can air its programs to some of the 340
million homes with cable TV.
Last year, prospects looked good when China moved toward loosening
rules on foreign media investments. But in recent months, Liu and
other leaders of the Chinese government have clamped down on
foreigners' participation in China's burgeoning media industry,
declaring last month that they wouldn't allow more foreign
television channels and would tighten their grip on the 31 satellite
broadcasters in China.
Chinese officials say they want to "safeguard national cultural
security." But some analysts believe that the restrictions are aimed
at keeping advertising revenue in the hands of state-controlled and
domestic media enterprises. Even as Beijing has moved to limit
foreign companies, it has encouraged the development of private
Chinese media firms.
Disney isn't the only company hindered by the new rules. Viacom
Inc.'s Nickelodeon children's channel has been waiting for two years
for a broadcasting license. One of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
ventures in China has been shut down. Time Warner Inc., Sony Corp.
and others involved in co-production of movies in China now face
greater censorship.
These media giants haven't said much about how the rules will affect
their investment plans. For the most part, they're "sitting tight,
not upsetting regulators and being more patient," said Vivek Couto,
an executive director of Media Partners Asia in Hong Kong.
But frustrations are beginning to spill out.
Murdoch, who with his Chinese-born wife, Wendi Deng, has cultivated
Beijing over the last decade to become the top Western television
company in China, said at a conference Friday in New York that his
company had "hit a brick wall" in the Middle Kingdom. In the last
year, he said, China has backed away from opening up to foreign news
organizations. He called Chinese authorities "quite paranoid about
what gets through."
Richard Parsons, Time Warner's chairman, who also spoke at the
session organized by former President Clinton, said the Chinese
wanted to monitor the traffic and e-mails sent on the Internet.
Parsons said that was why he bailed out of a deal to distribute
America Online there.
Some industry executives and analysts view the curbs against Western
media as part of Chinese President Hu Jintao's broader campaign to
head off perceived threats to his rule. Communist leaders have long
seen the media as more of a propaganda tool than a commercial
enterprise. In recent months, the central government has reined in
journalists and cut off Internet forums at some major universities
as the Internet has helped to foster criticism of party officials
and policies.
The restrictions on foreign media coincide with a changing of the
guard at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television,
where longtime provincial official Wang Taihua replaced media
veteran Xu Guangchun as head of the regulatory body.
Some American media executives also believe that Beijing's
tightening reflects the deterioration of U.S.-China relations in the
last year.
<snip>
Chinese analysts are skeptical. "China does not have a commitment to
open its media industry," said Chen Shaofeng, vice director of the
Research Institute of Cultural Industry, which is connected to
Peking University.
Of Disney's chances of winning a channel in the near future, Chen
said, "It won't happen."
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