Adventures of an English language magazine publisher in China

"I guess I have a stubborn streak and am not afraid of a scrap," Mark Kitto says, reflecting on his time as an independent magazine publisher in China.

From the late 1990s, Kitto set about establishing a series of English language listings magazines in some of China’s major cities, building a strong advertising base and winning plaudits from readers while regularly running the gauntlet of the authorities.

However, his final push to team up with a Hong Kong-based partner that would free him from the shackles of enforced partnership with indigenous publishers and so-called Chinese News Bureaux – and that would allow him to have a legal shareholding in his own business – came a cropper.

Ironically, it was some of his own staff that deliberately blew his cover before he could move, fearful for their own future. His magazine stable ended up in the hands of the Communist party.

Kitto’s adventures are detailed in a recently published memoir, which gives a colourful account of what it is like for a westerner to run a business in China. Double crossing – from ex-pats as much as from Chinese – and state meddling in his business operations, feature widely.

“Bullying and intimidation”

Speaking to

The Irish Times

, he carefully stops short of talking about corruption. “I would class it more as bullying and intimidation. Doing business was expensive and unreasonable. The only time I had to pay a cash bribe to a guy though, the money was returned to me a few months later because there was a crackdown.”

The picture that emerges is of a highly regulated media sector where foreigners were forced to find local partners to get licences to publish.

Asked about the cost of this, Kitto says that as a rule of thumb it meant that typically around a third of the profits of his publishing venture had to be paid over to a Chinese company. He believed this money would ultimately be channelled to the Communist party.

Censorship was also an issue. His publisher partners attempted to control editorial material. Personal classified listings proved contentious, so Kitto’s team invented euphemisms as cover for unapproved ads. “Fan of Oscar Wilde” was one of the more popular ones.

Kitto’s route to publishing was an unusual one. Having been part-educated in China, he returned, after a stint in the British army, to work as a metal dealer there.

He then dabbled in freelance journalism and got involved with a fledgling ex-pat newsletter set-up by an American-Chinese bar-owner in Guangzhou. Aptly named Clueless in Guangzhou, it was a listings magazine aimed at English-speakers. Kitto gave it an editorial edge and developed its advertising revenue and pagination.

Clueless broke new ground. Kitto recalls going to a restaurant PR evening where all of the magazine editors were presented with cash-stuffed envelopes, and seeing the look of disgust on his rivals faces when they discovered that the reviews in his magazine were not paid for.

Readers warmed to the independent editorial approach, however, and advertisers soon took to the publication too.

“Our magazine had hit the sweet spot for an emerging generation of Chinese as they embraced individualism and the outside world and at the same time shepherded the vast flock of foreigners pouring into China in search of adventure,” he says.

Tipped off

Within weeks, however, the authorities had swooped on the magazine’s offices, informing them of the illegality of the venture.

He was discreetly tipped off about how to get a Chinese partner as official publisher, a process Kitto had to repeat as he developed his franchise which morphed into a series entitled That's ..., with other titles in Shanghai and eventually in Beijing. At its height in early 2004, Kitto says the venture employed 120 staff and had healthy profits on turnover of several million euros.

Kitto had at least one key advantage – a reasonably proficient command of the local language. “Being able to read business contracts was a huge help. You realise that they are often written with gaps and ambiguities that can be used against you when required.”

Kitto says that while he has no regrets about having set up a business in China at the time, he wouldn’t do it now, believing that the conditions for doing business have worsened for foreigners.

“The only fortunes to be made in China are through trade, which is fine, but I would not advise people to set up a business there. If you do, prepare yourself to really pay for it.”

The China that Kitto knew and fell in love with as a student in the mid-1980s is one that he yearns for. “There was a sense of excitement in the air about a young country opening up. Tiananmen Square put an end to that.”

While China did not make him rich, it did provide him with the means to lease a large mountain retreat near Shanghai, where he lived with his wife and young children for a number of years, before returning to the UK in 2013.

His interest in publishing continues and his latest venture is a series of advertising-based guides targeting tourists in holiday cottages in rural England. He believes the venture has scalability and plans to franchise it.