The New York Times is gearing up to launch a Chinese-language website that will deliver news to readers beyond the communist country’s wall of censorship.
The New York Times reports on itself:
The site, which is called cn.nytimes.com and will go live Thursday morning, is intended to draw readers from the country’s growing middle class, what The Times in its news release called "educated, affluent, global citizens.’’
The site will feature about 30 articles a day on national, foreign and arts topics, as well as editorials. Joseph Kahn, the paper’s foreign editor, said that about two-thirds of the content would be translated from Times articles and one-third would be written by Chinese editors and local freelance journalists.
The Times Company, which is well aware of the censorship issues that can come up in China, stressed that it would not become an official Chinese media company. The Times has set up its server outside China and the site will follow the paper’s journalistic standards. Mr. Kahn said that while the Chinese government occasionally blocked certain articles from nytimes.com, he was hopeful that the Chinese government would be receptive to the Chinese-language project.
