By 1990, reconstruction had gone on long enough, and the magazine's name was changed to China Today.

Under the auspices of the China Welfare Institute, it publishes monthly editions in English as well as Chinese, French, Spanish, German, and Arabic.

The paper was first launched in 1943, but it was suspended and revived three times before its present incarnation began in 1981. Its current design, in restrained blues and reds, is much more tasteful than it was just a few years ago, when it was a sea of bright ink.

Beijing Youth Daily is a leader in the Chinese media's commercialization drive; its holding company, Beijing Media Corp, was the first mainstream media entity to go public in 2004.

Publication License Number: CN11-0103

The website provides continually-updated news, a blogging platform, and popular forums.

Xinhuanet carries Xinhua's English-language news feed on Chinaview.

Founded in 1931 as the Red China News Agency, it gained its current name at Yan'an in 1937.

Although Xinhua has been slowly changing from a propaganda machine into something resembling a Chinese version of Reuters, the agency also has a regulatory function and can work in concert with GAPP or autonomously. Occasionally it seems to take advantage of its semi-governmental position to stymie the competition.

Among Xinhua's properties:

• Xinhuanet, an online portal
• Xinhua Daily Telegraph (新华每日电讯), a daily newspaper chock full of Xinhua wire reports
• Reference News (参考消息), a daily digest of the international press
• International Herald Leader (国际先驱导报), which reports on global affairs
• Economic Information Daily (经济参考报), a financial newspaper
• Modern Express (现代快报), a Jiangsu-based metro daily
• Globe Magazine (环球), a biweekly news magazine
• Outlook (瞭望周刊), a weekly news magazine with a special focus on government policy
• Oriental Outlook (瞭望东方周刊), an alternative news weekly designed to operate relatively independently of Xinhua's bureacracy
• China Comment (半月谈), a fortnightly magazine of political and social commentary
• Chinese Journalist (中国记者), a monthly media journal
• China Securities Journal (中国证券报) and Shanghai Securities News (上海证券报), daily financial papers
• Xinhua PR Newswire, a press release service for Asian companies, run jointly with PR Newswire

Xinhua is unaffiliated with the Xinhua Daily (新华日报), a paper founded in 1938 that was turned over to the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee after the revolution.

Its advertising arm, Beijing Media Corporation, listed in the Hong Kong stock exchange in December, 2004. However, a subsequent downturn in the real estate market took away some of the lucrative property ads that it had relied on. It reported a 99.7% drop in profits the first half of 2005, and then revealed that six employees were arrested for corruption.

Rather than using the company's IPO as an opportunity for growth and development, evidently some executives saw it as a quick way to get their hands on cash; two days after listing, they set up another private company to funnel the investment into.

Beijing Media Corp has Naspers and the government of Singapore as investors, and has an advertising partnership with Hubei Youth Daily.

SEEC's leading properties are Caijing, the intrepid investigative business magazine, and Hexun, a financial-oriented web portal.

The company also has the mainland rights to a number of international magazines, including Better Homes and Gardens and Sports Illustrated.

Here's how Danwei described him in an article accompanying a Danwei TV interview:

The founder and CEO of Modern Media, Thomas Shao (邵忠) is a fascinating character: a home grown media tycoon in the making. All of his magazines are in original, slightly quirky formats, and while there are plenty of foreign influences, none of them are modeled on a foreign title. A little like the man himself: dressed in understated designer clothes, he is elegant and cosmopolitan-looking, but he has never lived outside China.
...
In 1993, he left the gold rice bowl of his government job and went into business. That year he started the company that is now called Modern Media Group (现代传播), launching Modern Pictorial magazine (现代画报), a glossy lifestyle magazine that was the only serious local competitor to Elle China, launched in 1988, and Trends (now Cosmopolitan China).

He was involved in other businesses at the same time, but his passion for media eventually convinced him to drop everything else and focus on magazines. In 1997, he launched Modern Weekly (周末画报), a weekly news magazine with information about business, current affairs, fashion, culture and entertainment. It made an immediate impact on the drab newsstands in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing with its bright colors, and eye catching design.

Shanghai Media Group (上海文广新闻传媒集团) operates Shanghai-based broadcast and satellite networks; Shanghai Film Group (上海电影集团公司) runs film, animation, and dubbing studios in Shanghai. The company is also involved in providing content for mobile devices.

Shown here is the edition of 3 June, 2008, in which the paper announced that it had become one of China's top 500 brands.

Publication License Number: CN32-0055

Publication License Number: CN44-0178

On Wednesdays, the Entertainment edition contains trashy celebrity gossip equal to best of the paparazzi press, married to high-concept features, serious interviews with people in the arts, and film and album reviews.

On Fridays, the Life edition publishes in-depth social analysis, interviews with academics, and book reviews, filling out the magazine with interesting articles translated from the foreign press. Like its parent newspaper, Southern Metropolis Daily, SMW does substantial reporting on social inequality and bureaucratic malfeasance.

The editors indulge their sense of humor fairly often. They publish an annual spoof issue, and their covers are often wickedly funny (here's their take on Chinabounder, for example).

Note: The website lags a few days behind the print edition.

Publication License Number: CN44-0121

Publication License Number: CN 11-4490/TP

The Bund is BQ but with a Shanghai focus. It comes in multiple sections devoted to fashion, entertainment, culture, and famous brands. Advertising is targeted at the upper-middle class, and the whole thing is permeated by a western-leaning aesthetic.

Publication License Number: CN31-0068

One of its reporters was found murdered in January, 2008, but the paper believes it was random violence - a mugging gone bad - instead of any sort of retribution for her reporting, which was mainly tax news (link).

Publication License Number: CN11-0151

Formerly China Materials News (中国物资报), it was passed off to the China Disabled Persons Federation in early 2001 after the State Internal Trade Bureau was eliminated in a government restructuring.

Initially published three times a week as a metro newspaper heavily inspired by Southern Weekly, by the end of the year it had become a daily with dreams of being China's New York Times. But there wasn't much of a market for commentary at the time (The Beijing News was still a few years away), so China Times was unable to realize its aspirations. A retooling in mid-2002 shrunk it down to a metro tabloid in the style of the Beijing Times, which it began to resemble in content (see this short history).

In March, 2004, apparently in response to the influence that The Beijing News had gained since is launch the previous November, China Times expanded its scope from local to national news and added special weekly lifestyle features and a section devoted to Beijing's Central Business District (press release).

A substantial redesign took place before a widely-publicized relaunch on 20 November, 2005. The color scheme was changed from red to blue, and the overall design was somewhere between the populism of the Beijing Times and the elitism of The Beijing News. Despite a beefed-up investigative news department, daily op-ed content, and fearless entertainment reporters, the paper failed to make any money.

In July, 2007, with considerable investment from the Wanda Group, it reinvented itself as a weekly business paper. "Lu Xun of the stock markets," Shui Pi (小皮, real name Lü Pingbo 吕平波), co-founder of the China Business Times (中华工商时报), was brought in as editor. Early on, the redesigned paper ran into problems with untrained staff, as this account from a reporter who complained about plagiarism attests, but things have improved since then.

It's now aiming to be the "Chinese Wall Street Journal" and the leading commercial financial newspaper in the country by 2012. It also has decent commentary and cultural coverage in addition to its focus on business.

Note: The mainland China Times should not be confused with the China Times of Taiwan (中国时报).

Publication License Number: CN11-0071