Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has overcome some of the biggest obstacles facing the progression of the Internet in China. Victor Keegan reports from London
RUPERT MURDOCH’S launch this year of an Internet service in China in partnership with the People’s Daily is the latest in a series of breathtaking media manoeuvres that already make Citizen Kane look like a parish councillor.
Last year he became the largest owner of TV stations in the United States, while also preparing the ground for the launch of a worldwide (digital) satellite television service covering the US, Japan, the United Kingdom and anywhere else prepared to take it.
Now, after a decade of preparing the ground (including removing the BBC from his Hong Kong-based Asia Star because it threatened his pan-China ambitions), Murdoch has made a big breakthrough into the biggest market in the world. The new service, ChinaByte (http://www.chinabyte.com) offers a comprehensive source of Western Internet information translated for Chinese speakers.
At a stroke, this has removed one of the biggest obstacles to the march of the Internet in China – that its lingua franca is English – while also rewarding Murdoch for his patience in allaying Chinese suspicions of his intentions. It also marks a digital glasnost for China in allowing so much Western information to flow through.
Although there will still be censorship of pornography and politics, it appears that it will be done on a case-by-case basis. The Chinese authorities took the opportunity to lift their ban on other Western Web sites, like the Wall Street Journal, to prove that the Chinese walls were coming down.
Murdoch continues to be a step or two ahead of all his competitors in the global chess game he is playing. His latest move is both a calling card for his plans to become a major television force in China (though Asia Star is still losing money) and also his recognition (along with Bill Gates last year) that the Internet has become the most powerful force of the information revolution. Murdoch said recently: “The Internet is bearing down on us like a fast train and we have to decide do we get on it or jump off the track.”
He is getting on to it in a big way. His global digital TV service will offer Internet services as well. An interactive link will be provided through the phone line.
Once again, not for him the hi-tech solution (which in this case would be high- capacity, fibre-optic links) but the cost- effective, business one. He has already been proved right by the success of his technologically inferior satellite television system. Who is to say he will be wrong this time? He is prepared to invest huge sums of money, accepting losses for many years, in order to fulfil his long- term ambitions.