Demand for high-quality info on China will only grow

Being a reporter who has written about China in English for seven years, I have seen many colleagues leave this profession.

With professional English proficiency and in-depth knowledge of the Chinese economy and society, many of them decided to work for multinational corporations, public relations agencies or financial institutions.

Their choices are understandable as one could easily get the feeling that the profession is in decline when the entire print media industry is challenged by the rise of new media and is struggling to adapt to the digital age.

Internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's recent $266 million purchase of the South China Morning Post, the 112-year-old Hong Kong-based English language newspaper, seemed to have reinforced this pessimism.

But as a coin has two sides, a positive message from the deal is that it can be seen as a capital endorsement of the value of a media asset that focuses on telling the China story in the English language.

There have been concerns about SCMP's editorial independence after Alibaba said it was willing to use the paper to change the perception of China and improve the country's image.

One recent Bloomberg opinion piece said it would be a daunting challenge for Alibaba as "the market for neutered coverage of China is exceedingly small and is becoming smaller".

I find it difficult to agree with the statement. It is true that there are no markets for unvarnished propaganda. And yet, what I have observed is a growing and vastly unsatisfied demand from the outside world for comprehensive information about China as the country has never been so integrated with the global economy as it is today.

Foreign investors and fund managers that I have interviewed are encouraged to see that the Chinese stock and bond markets are becoming increasingly accessible to them. But they often find that understanding and navigating in the vast, diverse Chinese market is challenging.

An equity analyst at a foreign investment bank told me that her clients have been constantly asking her about where they can find comprehensive information about China in English.

They often found the information from Western financial media outlets insufficient for them to make sense of the Chinese market or to decipher the dry and lengthy government reports and regulations, she said.

Countless new policies and reforms emerge every day and the regulatory environment in China seems always to be evolving. Many readers who care to understand China are in need of accurate, reliable and insightful information to make sense of the country, to carry out research or to execute business strategies.

I respect the work of my foreign colleagues but I believe that they hardly tell the whole story of China. Perhaps no one can and that is why readers need a plurality of views to draw their own conclusions.

Newspapers may be in decline. But a service that supplies useful and high quality comprehensive information will always be in high demand as long as people rely on it to make decisions and to make sense of the world.

In that respect, I think Alibaba deserves praise for empowering the international reach of a traditional print media outlet that is struggling with declining profit growth and a shrinking readership.

What Alibaba should be careful about is that the effort should be about leveraging capital and technology for a greater voice of China, not for China.