China Curbs Magazines from Foreign Publishers

China has placed a moratorium on new foreign magazines on topics other than science and technology, dealing a blow to international media companies looking to tap the nation's booming advertising market.

One casualty of the policy, adopted by China's top publishing regulator, is the Chinese edition of the rock and youth-culture magazine Rolling Stone. The magazine had published its first edition last month, but the General Administration of Press and Publications said it will forbid it from publishing again. The magazine falls in the restricted category, GAPP said, and its publishers never applied for the appropriate permission to publish.

China has imposed restrictions on investors before and then eased them or overlooked exceptions. But this rule is a big setback for publishers of lifestyle magazines, which had been one area in which foreign media could expand even as Beijing cracked down on television broadcasts.

"From now on, based on the GAPP policy, we might adjust to where it is possible to have approval," said Victor Visot, chief executive for China, Southeast Asia and Australia at Hachette Filipacchi Media, which licenses seven titles in China. "We will continue our growth, at the speed we expect, within what is possible in the Chinese market," he said, adding that the categories can be open to interpretation.

Already-approved titles can continue publishing normally, said a person familiar with the policy, which was confirmed by several officials of GAPP. The policy has been in place for about a year but was never published.

China doesn't grant foreign companies licenses to publish magazines or newspapers; instead, it allows dozens of so-called "copyright cooperation" agreements between state-owned publishers and foreign partners. In these, an existing government-owned magazine essentially rents its license to a foreign partner, which remakes the magazine into a Chinese edition of Vogue, Elle or Rolling Stone. The titles then must go through extensive regulatory approval.

The revised approval policy could damp a recent renaissance in Chinese magazines, launched to tap China's new urban consumer class. In recent years, China's media market has become the world's third-largest by advertising expenditure. Nielsen Media Research says marketers spent about 23% more, or a total of about $770 million, on magazine advertising in China last year than in 2004, based on published rate-card figures.

China's government has recently sought to rein in dissent and strengthen protections for domestic media companies by tightly regulating Chinese newspapers, television stations and Web sites. For example, after opening the TV industry to limited foreign broadcasts and some production joint ventures in 2003 and 2004, Chinese regulators last year said they wouldn't approve any new foreign TV channels in the foreseeable future.

Investors had regarded lifestyle magazines, which usually avoid politically sensitive topics and focus instead on consumption, as one of the least problematic outlets for foreign media companies in China. But the revised rules bring some of those same commercial restrictions to print publications.

While there has been no official statement from the central government on the rules, they may be part of an effort to protect the local publishing industry and limit the burgeoning number of lifestyle titles. There is no indication so far that Rolling Stone or any of the other dozens of international titles published in China have violated any specific Communist Party ideology. But media regulators have spoken out publicly against the creeping influence of Western culture in China.

So, since about a year ago, the internal, unpublished GAPP rules have limited the kinds of publications that can receive central-government approval for licensing a title from a foreign publisher, a person close to the matter said. "All nonscience magazines and newspapers are not allowed for now," said a GAPP official in Beijing who gave her name only as Ms. Zhang.

In September, after the new policy was in place, Advance Publications Inc.'s Vogue magazine launched a Chinese edition in partnership with state-owned publisher China Pictorial. Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Advance's Conde Nast International, said that Vogue received final approval at the end of 2004 and that he wasn't aware of a moratorium on new, foreign-owned titles.

Sports Illustrated also announced last month that it would publish a sports magazine in China beginning later this year. It wasn't immediately clear when or whether publisher Time Warner Inc. had secured the necessary approvals.

The GAPP rule applies to all licensed magazines and newspapers that publish a joint-venture Chinese edition of a foreign title. Foreign magazines or newspapers that seek to print their wholly owned international editions in China fall under different rules.

The new policy has been known to a number of major publishers for some time. For example, Hachette Filipacchi -- which was the first company to enter the market, with Elle Magazine in 1988 -- first learned of the rules about a year ago.

Trends Group, a joint venture between China's tourism ministry, Hearst Communications Inc. and International Data Group that publishes a Chinese edition of Cosmopolitan magazine, said it has also known of the rules for some time. Wang Xue, assistant to Trends Group's chief editor, said the restrictions won't affect the group's current business. She wouldn't comment on how it would affect the launch of future titles.

Besides Rolling Stone, it is unclear exactly which new titles might be affected by the policy, since media companies generally don't announce the magazines they are bringing to China until they have received approval.

Publishers of Rolling Stone in China -- the state-owned China Record Corp. and Hong Kong-based One Media Group -- didn't apply for GAPP approval to publish their first issue, said officials at GAPP's national and Shanghai offices. "This joint-venture magazine won't exist anymore," said Chen Li, an official with the Shanghai office.

Officials at One Media Group declined to comment. The editor of Rolling Stone's Chinese edition, Hao Fang, said he and his staff were still working on the April issue of the magazine.

It is unclear how long the policy will last. In the meantime, new imports may be in limbo. But Mr. Visot of Hachette Filipacchi is philosophical about it.

"If you don't like the rules," he said, "you don't play the game."