media - Liberalization print licenses expected

The rigid system for licensing print media in China, under the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), is expected to see a dramatic change before the summer, media sources indicate.
The ongoing explosion in publications and the need for more licenses in the booming Chinese market has grown finally GAPP over its head and it will defer its licensing duties to the responsible ministries. “They anyway had not time to read all those magazines they had to censor,” says one of the people involved in a new media venture. “Many of those magazines were anyway to often specialist publications they would not understand.”
The changes include private companies and wholly foreign owned entities.
While the official censorship through the Ministry of Propaganda will remain in place, taking away many of the bureaucratic barriers to obtain a publishing license will probably lead to another wave of new publications. The ministries are expected to be more liberal in allowing publication on their field in exchange for a fee. More general publications are expected to remain under the GAPP, but the majority of the market will be liberalized.

Urgent: see also my update here.

Books on media in China