media - Life style magazines search for market access

International life style magazines, like men's magazine Maxim are trying to enter the Chinese media market, writes Reuters today. Maxim is not alone, I have heard a whole set of rumors of publishing houses who want to try the China market.
The Chinese editions will be similar to the U.S. version but likely "a little less racy," said Kerin O'Connor, international licensing director for Dennis Publishing, the magazine's publisher in the Reuters dispatch, and in that way the magazine might give away the only asset it has in the Chinese market.
The market is stuffed with life style magazines, both for men and women, and competing with the domestic market will be tough. Chinese magazines have become more daring in the past few years and only by staying a step ahead foreign magazines could gain perhaps a market. They might also get more trouble with the conservative side of China.

Update: The People's Daily has additional information. The Maxim magazine will be published in Hong Kong, in two editions, one for Hong Kong and one for the mainland, by a joint venture of the South China Morning Post. Ten years ago the South China Morning Post tried to establish itself as the quality news paper of Asia. Since then, as so many other media, it has gone for shareholders' value and racy magazines. They will have a hard time in China, because of the competition and because they are technically a foreign magazine with strict restrictions on distribution.