One Billion Customers - James McGregor [104]
“That’s Rupert in the middle,” the executive said, “and all along the outer circle are the people who run the various businesses. Murdoch controls everything personally.” With Murdoch’s children serving as key executives, the Chinese tycoon model was complete.
The Chinese also learned that Murdoch’s conservatism was only business-deep. True, in Washington he aligned himself closely with Newt Gingrich and the Republican right and his New York Post helped build and promote the political careers of Republicans like Rudolph Giuliani. But it also supported Democrats like Ed Koch and his British friendships spanned the political spectrum to insure he was close to whoever was in power.
He was also relentless, a quality the Chinese respect. Ding had ordered the State Council Information Office to keep Murdoch busy with low-level meetings and to prevent him from talking directly to senior leaders. But by working through Australian diplomats, Murdoch arranged to meet Chinese Vice-Premier Zhu Rongji in July 1997, using the pretext of a trip by Zhu to Australia. They got on well. During the meeting, Zhu momentarily confounded Murdoch. “I see you became an American citizen so you could operate a television network in the United States,” Zhu said. “Would you be willing to become a Chinese citizen to get into the television business in China?” Murdoch looked pained. But then he joined in the gales of laughter that accompanied Zhu’s little joke.
China could be comfortable with Murdoch. If he agreed to something, it would happen. It was so disappointing to deal with multinational media CEOs like Time Warner’s Gerald Levin. Levin spent much time developing a personal relationship with President Jiang Zemin, but he couldn’t control his company’s news operations. No matter how friendly Jiang and Levin were, CNN and Time magazine continued to do stories that angered the Chinese leadership.
Murdoch finally reached the top on December 10, 1998, when he met with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. The meeting was front-page news in China. Xinhua said that Jiang “expressed appreciation for the efforts made by world media mogul Rupert Murdoch in presenting China objectively and cooperating with the Chinese press over the past two years.” Once Murdoch got his chance to tell his story to Chinese leaders face-to-face, they saw eye-to-eye, dictator-to-dictator.
From Menace to Mentor
Murdoch had gone from menace to mentor. One immediate lesson China learned from Murdoch: control the gateways. To ensure CNN, HBO, and other foreign channels beaming into China reached only the authorized audiences of hotels and housing compounds for foreigners or the Chinese elite, propaganda officials required that all foreign broadcasts coming into China be transmitted through a designated Chinese satellite. This consolidation of signals also made it possible for Communist Party censors to monitor all broadcasts twenty-four hours a day and cut the signal when reports authorities don’t like are shown on CNN and the other foreign channels. CCTV also created a dozen domestic specialty channels, ranging from sports to economic news to children’s programming, and required all the new cable systems in China to carry them. Within a few years, Chinese citizens had access to several dozen domestic television channels. The government had worked hard to fill up the pipeline to stave off the foreign broadcasters. Throughout this buildup, Murdoch offered a helping hand. He sponsored delegation after delegation of Chinese officials and TV station executives to visit his television operations in the United States and Europe. Murdoch showed them how to use satellite