China makes it harder for publishers

There's a good post of the China Law Blog today in which they reveal details of the new Catalog for the Guidance of Foreign Invested Enterprises (Revised 2007) or 外商投资产业指导目录（2007 年修订) from the National Development and Reform Commission in China.

Of particular note to publishers (print and online) is this section:

Continued restriction and prohibition of participation in publishing, media, market research and social research. In recognition of the influence of the Internet as an alternative publishing source, various Internet based businesses have been added to the prohibited category. This denial of access for media and publishing is a hot button for the United States and the Chinese do not seem willing to budge a bit on this.

No surprise that they're not opening up. Nor, for that matter that they're trying to plug the loopholes in the regulation of the online side. I'll be digging deeper into that to try to work out what's going on.