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Mao Zedong may be tossing in his mausoleum. The People s Daily , mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party since 1948, is listingits online business on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. That s theBeijing-based newspaper best known for turgid headlines trumpetingParty unity. The calligraphic title People s Daily featured atthe top of each paper is a copy of the original handwritinginscribed by the Great Helmsman. The venerable party paper s online business, also known asPeople.cn Co., will raise 1.4 billion yuan ($222 million) in itsinitial public offering, almost three times the original target,says a Shanghai Stock Exchange filing on April 18. The sale valuesthe company at 5.5 billion yuan, 46 times earnings. While the People s Daily owns some 80 percent of People.cn Co., China s big threestate-owned telecom companies, China Mobile ( CHL ) , China Telecom ( CHA ) , and China Unicom ( CHU ) , are also shareholders. The listed company will have an initialmarket capitalization of $872 million, not far behind the $954million value of the New York Times Co. ( NYT ) , reported Bloomberg News on April 19. What are the Net dreams of the official voice of the Party? TheJanuary prospectus highlighted the People s Daily s advantages as having exclusive government news content plusadvertising revenues from companies including state-owned ones. Italso provides information services for the Chinese government,including the Ministry of Finance. Revenue grew to 331.7 millionyuan in 2010, up 75 percent, while profit more than tripled to 81.6million yuan, according to the prospectus. The company plans to use the proceeds for upgrading its newscontent and technology, including mobile delivery. And it said ithopes this will help it better compete with much more successfulInternet rivals Sina ( SINA ) and Sohu.com ( SOHU ) . The oversubscribed funds are expected to offer more leg roomfor the company s capital liquidity as the market has become morevolatile, China Daily reported on April 18. It is unclear whether a reliance on government news, exclusive ornot, will be an advantage. China s boisterous Internet now hassome 485 million Internet users and 300 million microbloggers,according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology,and is increasingly characterized by free-wheeling, sometimesrumor-driven content. China s state media feels challenged bythe Internet by private sector entrepreneurs like Sina, saysDuncan Clark, chairman and founder of Beijing-based telecom andInternet consultancy BDA China. And while seeking outside capital at one time was taboo for statemedia companies, they have mustered enough political capital tomake something like this happen, says Clark. But that doesn tmean that what comes out of it will be any good. Even if they list,can they get the talent [to improve content and delivery]? Peoplewill be asking, why work there instead of at a Tencent ( 700 ) or Sina? People.cn s main website was only the 50th most popular in Chinaas of August last year. New York-listed Sina was then No. 4, whileSohu was seventh, according to data from Chinarank.org.cn , which was cited in the listing prospectus. If they don t push ahead and change themselves, they run therisk of becoming irrelevant. And online is the game now, saysClark. They have a lot of political capital, but their ability tomake anything out of it is another issue. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Rugged Military Computers , Multi Port KVM Switch, and more. For more , please visit Rugged Notebook Computers today!
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