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London/Beijing (pte043/11.04.2005/16:45) - British daily newspaper The Times http://www.times.co.uk is considering an alliance in China with a local newspaper publisher, prompting speculation it plans a major expansion into the increasingly important market. As the Media Guardian http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk reports, recent visits by the editor, Robert Thomson, to the communist country sparked speculation that the paper could launch a Times insert in a Chinese newspaper, but an exchange programme between British and Chinese journalists is more likely. Thomson, whose wife is Chinese, has visited China twice in the past two months and conducted a series of high-level meetings with local editors and marketing executives. He has also recruited two correspondents for the paper.
As the Media Guardian reports, the paper has just hired Jane Macartney to be its China editor. Macartney, the former Reuters bureau chief in Beijing and south-east Asia, is a fluent Chinese speaker and the paper regards her hiring as a coup. It has also recruited Clifford Coonan to be a "superstringer" to specialise in business and economic news and cover for Macartney when she is travelling. Thomson has met with executives at the China Daily, the dominant English-language newspaper controlled by the Communist party. The meeting prompted speculation that an insert of the Times into the China Daily could be on the cards, similar to the New York Times section that appears in the Daily Telegraph on Thursdays.
However, insiders insist that no "Times of China" is planned and the company is known to regard inserts as "tricky". Any such plans are in very early stages, the paper says. It has been using its close relationship with the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper in Japan to put it in contact with other Asian publishers. An exchange programme would involve sending two or three Times journalists to a Chinese paper for several months, with the Times hosting the same number of Chinese journalists.
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