[photopress:wendi_1.jpg,full,alignright]Rupert Murdoch has his wife, Wendi Deng, working with senior News Corp executives to help bring the company’s popular MySpace social networking site to China.
Rupert Murdoch said, ‘We have to make MySpace a very Chinese site. I have sent my wife across there because she understands the language.’
He said that Wendi Deng, who is not an officer of the company, was currently in China with senior News Corp executives trying to find a way for MySpace to enter the Chinese market without running up against political obstacles and the ‘heavy weather’ that internet groups Google and Yahoo have encountered.
He said MySpace was likely to have local partners, who would own around 50 per cent. This would ensure content was suitable for a Chinese audience, and Rupert Murdoch also said it would mean his partners could deal with complaints, not him.
There is a fair amount of history here. Rupert Murdoch once made remarks which could be seen as disparaging to China. Big mistake. Huge. Since then he has been trying to expand his media group in the Chinese mainland, but admitted last year he was hitting a brick wall with the authorities in terms of their willingness to let foreign media groups control television broadcasting and large amounts of content.
MySpace is adding around 1.5m new users every week and recently surpassed 100m registered users. It recently launched in the UK and is planning other European expansion.
Wendi Deng is the perfect person to represent News Corp. She is a former vice president of News Corporation’s Asian satellite television operation, STAR. She holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BA in economics from California State University at Northridge in Los Angeles. She knows television, is so bright it hurts, is Chinese. One day a major book will be written about this quite amazing woman.
Source: The Financial Times by way of SinoLinx