Rupert China

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Rupert's Adventures in China (RRP $32.95) 

When China's reformers eased open the communist giant's doors to the world, they found Rupert Murdoch standing outside in his best suit with a bunch of flowers.

Used to being courted by those in power, Murdoch made a clumsy suitor. If the billionaire media mogul could swagger into China and add the world's biggest audience to his News Corp empire, he quickly discovered that things worked differently in the Middle Kingdom. The communist leadership kept the 'ultimate capitalist roader' at arm's length.

Nonetheless, amid many blunders and much wasted money, News Corp managed to connect China to the world through the internet and to transform its staid television into a popular entertainment medium. But was Beijing simply using Murdoch to help the country modernise and to rehabilitate its image in the wake of Tiananmen Square? Did the panda outwit the fox?

Bruce Dover, Murdoch's man on the ground in China for much of the 1990s, delivers a rollicking, insider's account of doing deals at the highest level of business and politics. In this intimate portrait of the impulsive billionaire in his prime, Dover describes fatefully introducing his boss to Wendi Deng - News Corp's future has a Chinese face after all.

Here's what the critics said:

“Few News Corporation executives have written about their boss. Mr Dover does so evenly, without venom, and with a quizzical tone that suggests Mr Murdoch was a little naive about the Chinese...” -- The Economist

“This is not a loyal book, which is one of the reasons it is interesting. Bruce Dover spent enough time in enough proximity to Rupert Murdoch to take a measure of the man and that measure is this memoir ... Not that Dover is unfair. This book navigates the shoals between gossip and analysis without ever coming aground as malicious.” -- Sydney Morning Herald

“Mr Murdoch's rivals and critics will no doubt relish the recounting of Beijing's sometimes humorous humbling of the media magnate. Zhu Rongji, later China's premier, once even playfully inquired if Mr Murdoch would be willing to take Chinese citizenship to win access to the market.” -- Financial Times

“This is a riveting story about two of the world's most powerful forces ... The book has been reviewed in the Economist and the Financial Times, but neither other British newspapers nor broadcasters have touched it ... anticipatory compliance is Murdoch's most powerful weapon. I doubt he needed to tell all 247 of his editors to support the invasion of Iraq, but they did ...” -- The Guardian

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