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 James Borton eyes the
media
Magazine licensing red-hot in China
Signs that the world's most
populous nation has abandoned socialism in almost all
but name and hurled itself into exuberant capitalism are
colorfully demonstrated by the globalization of the
magazine industry and in the slick pages of slick new
Chinese journals. This has given rise to Chinese fashion
magazines, enticing a new generation of female readers
with high-end name-brand advertisements and tips on the
latest fashions, the "in" lipstick colors, hairstyles
and lifestyles, and peeks at the rich and famous. Some
even write about art and culture and tell China's new
middle class where to find the most-talked-about plays,
films and books.
International media deals in
the Middle Kingdom are getting hotter than a hot cup of
green tea, according to many global magazine publishers
and industry consultants, since all publishers want a
slice of China's expanding consumer market. China's
accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) means it
must admit foreign competitors into banking, auto
production, publishing - you name it - and level the
playing field.
And as long as they're "just"
apolitical, money-making glossy magazines about
consumerism, business and being fashionable, censorship
issues do not arise. Modern China wants its women.
especially its independent professionals with disposable
incomes, to put their best, most modishly shod foot
forward - no more shapeless and identical drab "Mao"
suits, hacked haircuts and black slippers. Those were
discarded long ago, and now China looks to the real
glitz and glamour.
Under the bright neon lights
of major newsstands and kiosks in the major coastal
cities - the trend setters and followers, especially in
Shanghai - are hundreds or possibly thousands of
international titles including Esquire, Cosmopolitan,
Seventeen, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, PC,
magazines of all shades and stripes, and appealing to
virtually all interests. And of course there are
domestic glossy fashion and lifestyle magazines, such as
iLook and Rayli, all vying for space in cluttered kiosks
along busy thoroughfares.
"Brand names are
social status and quality of life. For example, when I
was in the United States, I didn't pay much attention to
brand names. Here it's a culture. Look at me now, I'm
equipped with nothing but brand names, say, Gucci,
Fendi, Armani, Versace and the like," Lin Jie, 34, a
producer/manager for China Central Television (CCTV),
told Asia Times Online when asked about the importance
of fashion magazines to her.
Magazines the
door to the rising middle class
With the
liberalization of the Chinese publishing industry, the
magazine industry's consumer and trade publishers found
an open road to China's rising middle class, a
springboard for many Western publishers in their joint
ventures with Chinese partners. China's recent media
reforms, in line with its WTO obligations to level the
playing field and admit foreign competitors, have made
this magazine bonanza possible.
Until very
recently, foreign publishers working in partnership with
a Chinese agent had to use various municipal
distributors and local post offices for distribution of
their magazines. The reforms are now helping magazine
publishers lift the restrictions on distribution. This
has been achieved largely because of China's accession
to the WTO and it now enables foreign companies to
establish their own nationwide magazine distribution
networks.
"Consumption as part of the economy is
very much promoted. These new magazines have come to be
recognized as part of the media industry rather than the
state ideological apparatus. They also represent the
effort of foreign media corporations in extending their
influence in the Chinese market," Professor Joseph Chan
of the Chinese University of Hong Kong School of
Journalism and Communication told Asia Times Online.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)
has released reports that suggest China's middle class
accounted for roughly 20% of the country's 1.3 billion
population in 2003, estimated at between 200 million and
300 million. Based on an annual growth of 1 percentage
point, the "middle class" (according to the academy's
standard, this constitutes families with assets valued
at US$18,137-$36,275) is expected to make up almost 40%
of the total population in 2020, according to the
academy report (not yet available in English online).
"China's size and influence are such that
current and aspiring players cannot afford to be absent
from the market," said publisher Tom Gorman, who
successfully launched the Chinese edition of Fortune
magazine in 1996 and now works as a media analyst at CCI
Asia Pacific Ltd. Author of Guidelines for Publishing
in China, Gorman explained that advertising spending
in the magazine category grew by an average of 33%
annually from 1984 to 2003 and is likely to maintain
very high rates of growth for the foreseeable future.
30,000 magazines introduced in 2002
alone
According to the International Federation
of the Periodical Press (FIPP) headquartered in London,
China's reported magazine financial picture over the
past year is the only compass needed for foreign
publishers to make a beeline to Beijing and also to
inspire more domestic start-ups. In 2002, the total
value of imported publications in China amounted to well
over $68.5 million, with 30,000 publications introduced
into the marketplace. In 2003, the total advertising
revenue of all Chinese B2B (business to business) titles
was more than $302 million. With the highest gross
domestic product growth in all of Asia, China's GDP was
well over 9% in the first half of 2004, and with nearly
300 million middle-class consumers spending wildly on
cars, computers, mobile phones and property, it's no
wonder that the Chinese version of Cosmopolitan magazine
sells more than 550,000 copies each month.
Cosmopolitan, published by Hearst Magazines, was
introduced to the Chinese in 1998 by George Green,
president and chief executive officer of Hearst
Magazines International. The magazine is licensed
through a Beijing-based partner, Trends Magazine, which
publishes other Hearst titles, including Cosmogirl,
Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, Good Housekeeping and Popular
Mechanics in China, and in Chinese.
"We have not
seen any interference on the part of the government as
regards to the content of our titles. The only time we
had a problem was five years ago when the government
made us remove the branded title, Cosmopolitan, for four
months from the cover of all our magazines for reasons
never explained," said the indefatigable Green in an
e-mail interview with Asia Times Online before jetting
off to Milan. This case appeared to be an issue of
intellectual property rights, not censorship.
Editors of Trends magazine, located in Beijing,
declined to be interviewed for this article and referred
all questions to Trends Communications' US partner,
Hearst Magazines International. In China, Hearst
International and International Data Group individually
own a 20% equity in Trends Communications. The remaining
ownership is controlled by the Ministry of Tourism of
the People's Republic of China.
The success of
Hearst's consumer titles in China did not go unnoticed
by Hung Huang, a bright modern Chinese woman with
impeccable political lineage, a US education (New York
state's Vassar College), and the jobs of publisher and
CEO of an upscale magazine.
Chinese identify
more with Gucci than Mao
"Being an entrepreneur
is very difficult in China and coming from a prestigious
family has its advantages and disadvantages. The
advantage is that you get through doors easier, the
disadvantage is that most people would enjoy watching
you fail more than you succeed," said Hung Huang,
publisher and CEO of iLook , launched in 1998, as a
slick luxury-goods magazine with a readership now
approaching 60,000. She discussed the magazine industry
in an extensive interview with Asia Times Online.
Hung's mother was a personal English tutor to
Chairman Mao Zedong, and her stepfather, Qiao Guanhua,
served as China's foreign minister of China in the
1970s. Qiao was responsible along with US national
security advisor Henry Kissinger for the Shanghai
Communique, stating the basics of the new China-US
relationship, at the historic meeting between president
Richard Nixon and premier Chou Enlai.
"My mom
was dead set against this [fashion-magazine business] in
the beginning. She thought a fashion magazine was
flimsy, not serious, and light-headed. She thought I had
totally forgotten I have a brain and am not that pretty.
Years later, I found out that my grandfather actually
started the first magazine ever in China - it was a
political journal under the rule of the Qing Dynasty,"
Hung, 43, said in an e-mail response to questions from
Asia Times Online.
Hung's company, China
Interactive Media Group (CIMG), is in Beijing, about
five kilometers from Tiananmen Square, in what is
referred to as the 798 Factory Complex, designed in the
1950s Bauhaus style. This is where many young Chinese
involved in the arts and publishing have converted
abandoned factories into studio galleries and lofts. Not
all of the media projects have proved successful. The
failure of the Chinese version of Wired was attributed
to both a nosedive in the "new economy" in the United
States and overzealous Chinese government censors.
Hung's trendy magazine iLook is bringing in
advertisements from Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and
others at a cost of $6,800 a page, and the glossy
averages more than 30 pages of ads an issue. The
newsstand price is the equivalent of $2.50 per copy.
According to Hung, iLook focuses on celebrities,
and the journal carries a regular column on what
celebrities are wearing to public events. This column is
one of the most popular items in the magazine.
Building a brand following
Another
favorite among readers is a column called Branded. It
goes into the story of a brand and gets into details of
its products. Another one is something like "Not Yet in
China", which talks about brands that are hot
internationally but not yet sold in China. She builds a
constituency before the brand arrives.
And iLook
is not about first dates or grabbing a husband, but how
to tell the real Louis Vuitton from the knockoff. Owning
the genuine article is increasingly important to
status-conscious independent professional women with
disposable incomes.
Hung's CMIG is also the
licensee for Time Out Beijing and Time Out Shanghai.
Time Out, headquartered in London, has been successful
by transacting licensing deals with foreign publishers,
which gives the foreign partner 100% of the
responsibility for producing the magazine.
"Chinese publishers, both consumer and B2B, are
actively looking to partner with Western media. Almost
everywhere you look in China, from building and
construction titles to art and antiques and fashion,
there are opportunities for licensing," claimed Allen
Furst, the president of Asian Projects Inc, a media
consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Hung's glossy magazine iLook created a big
splash initially in the entertainment industry. "We are
very influential among the entertainment elite. Our
editor-in-chief, Xiao Xue, is dubbed as the godmother of
fashion for the stars," Hung told Asia Times Online. The
magazine's editor receives thousands of letters from
women seeking advice about what to wear for public
events. As luxury brands have permeated the new China,
iLook and other lifestyle magazines offer quality
fashion information for the newly independent
professional woman.
$10 an issue for Chinese
fashion magazine
"I don't object to paying $10
an issue for Rayli, another Chinese fashion magazine,
arguably the most popular fashion magazine in China,"
said Harvard business graduate student, Yuan Chen, 24,
who plans to head to a career on Wall Street after
graduation.
CMIG's license agreement with Time
Out, a global magazine franchise for city publishers
that provides a glossy and timely guide on the local
arts and entertainment scene, is important to the
entrepreneur Hung.
"Among our titles, this one
is the closest to my heart. The most innovative,
creative theater and art could not reach the Chinese
public - we didn't know where to go to find these
things. So to publish a Chinese listings magazine is not
only a business, but I felt it was something I could do
to contribute to the growth of Chinese urban culture. I
so want my readers to see what great culture is
happening around them," Hung said.
It's a short
stroll for Hung (who revealed that it takes exactly 287
steps) each day from her doorstep in the stylishly
remodeled Bauhaus-style complex to reach her office
where she offers fashion and arts information to a new
stratum of affluent and independent women. This does
seem to offer a sharp contrast to Chairman Mao's Long
March to Chinese communism: the short walk to capitalism
and maybe even feminism.
James Borton
is an author and freelance writer currently at work on a
book on China's media. He welcomes media news releases,
tips about trends, story ideas and comments. He can be
reached at asiareview@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information on
sales, syndication and republishing.)
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