SHANGHAI — The online division of the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, won approval on Friday to go ahead with an initial public offering of stock.
The decision by China’s top securities regulator paves the way for the People’s Daily online to raise up to $85 million by selling stock on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, most likely this year.
It is the first time a state-run media Web site has filed to go public, and it is expected to be followed by public offerings from an array of other state-run media properties, including Xinhua, the official news agency.
China is trying to upgrade state-run media outlets and cultural properties, partly by forcing them to be more market-oriented and less dependent on subsidies.
Beijing is also pressing its tightly controlled Party propaganda tools to better compete with popular Internet search engines and social networking Web sites in China like Sina, Sohu and Baidu.
Although Beijing has retained tight control over its media properties, and continues to censor and force-feed them official Party news, analysts say those properties have come a long way from the days when they were simply state mouthpieces.
Government media executives have made clear that they hope to push these properties to eventually emulate global giants like CNN and News Corporation, Bloomberg and Al Jazeera.
In Times Square in Manhattan, Xinhua, the official state-run news agency, is spending millions of dollars a year to promote itself on a giant electronic billboard.
China Central Television, or CCTV, the nation’s biggest state-controlled broadcaster, now has international channels broadcasting in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and other languages. CCTV is also hiring more overseas producers and journalists. The network is leasing space in Manhattan and building a United States broadcasting center in Washington.
Analysts say part of the aim is to improve China’s “soft power” capabilities, giving the country greater control over the way the Communist Party’s messages are delivered overseas.
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