China is lifting its ban on foreign investment in television and film production companies, as part of a package of landmark reforms intended to revitalise the country's sprawling state-dominated media industry. The prospect of direct involvement in TV and film production will be of intense interest to overseas media groups, which are hungry for a greater role in the rapidly growing Chinese market. The move also underlines Beijing's determination to commercialise media organisations ran...

The old whore of the East has cleaned up her act and is attracting a whole new generation of businessmen, journalists, eager entrepreneurs and party people. Shanghai is the coolest, the hottest, the most exciting Asian metropolis - the superlatives may change, but the sentiment remains the same. And as the city rises resplendent from the ashes of its less salubrious past, it constantly invites comparison - and competition - with another Pearl of the East, the former British colony of Hong Kong...