In a warren of offices painted in the regulation-blue colours of the National Basketball Association of the US, Zheng Chong shows off the latest issue of NBA Time, a flashy monthly that seeks to ride the sport's huge popularity in China. Launched in late 1999 by Mr Zheng and three friends with backing from a private property developer, the magazine has a circulation of 70,000, thanks to a tie-up with the NBA, which provides articles and glossy photos of the superstars in action. "No one else in China has this picture of Vince Carter," says Mr Zheng, proudly waving a recent issue whose cover features the NBA star charging across the court. Such competitive fervour is remaking the country's media landscape.

Officially, China's thousands thousands of newspapers and magazines are required to propagate the government line and answer to party overlords. In reality, they already occupy a dynamic marketplace in which advertising sales in television, print and outdoor media together reach an estimated $6 billion. As the state falls short of funds to keep them afloat, cash-strapped publications are being pushed to seek investment-and in many cases, help in design, ad sales and even article content-from private businesses.

The rush to forge such unholy alliances over the past year shows that even in the sensitive media realm, Beijing is taking an increasingly pragmatic view. Reporting freely on politics is still off-limits, and any publication that strays into that area an expect official retribution, editors say. But most of the new publications focus on areas like sports, fashion, and entertainment anyway, to cater to increasingly sophisticated urbanites and the advertisers seeking to reach them.

"The Party doesn't want to put up the money, so it must rely on private money to build this industry," says Yin Ke, a former editor at several state newspapers who has set up a private company to invest in media properties.

That lattitude is leading to an explosion of new ventures, including some with foreign investment. Beijing-based China Interactive Media Group which publishes a women's lifestyle magazine called iLook, plans next month to launch a magazine on Internet culture and a bilingual weekly guide to the city's burgeoning entertainment scene; the venture's foreign investors include famed US technology guru Nicholas Negroponte.

Xu Fan, a co-founder of the profitable consumer-oriented Shopping Guide newspaper, plans to launch a weekly and a magazine targeting women in their 30s in July with funding from a local property developer.

Tom.com Ltd., a Chinese-language Internet portal controlled by Hong Kong property tycoon Li Ka-shing, recently bought a 70% stake in two companies from the Yangcheng Group, a media group owned by the government of south China's Guangdong province. One acquisition is a sports-management company, the other an advertising company for which Tom.com will sell ads in the group's network of publications while control over content remains with the Chinese partner. It is a typical arrangement that addresses official fears over media control falling into foreign hands.

"I don't agree that you should never touch the media sector because of its sensitivity. The media needs good management like any other industry," says Sing Wang, chief executive officer of Tom.com, which has spent about $100 million, primarily through share swaps, in the past few months for the Yangcheng stake along with stakes in two outdoor-advertising companies.

Many of the new investments betray the influence of China's nascent Internet sector, where foreign investors have built a huge presence over the past two years despite regulations banning their involvement. China's top three Internet portals, which are all listed on the Nasdaq stock market, gained government approval for the listings last year only after hiving off ownership of the portals into private companies owned by Chinese individuals. Revenues from portal ad sales and other services are channelled to the listed vehicles through revenue-sharing agreements.

In the magazine deals, an investor generally hooks up with a state-owned entity at has a government-issued publishing license and retains formal control over editing the magazine. The private partner pays a "management fee" to use the license and handles all ad sales, distribution and design.

In many cases, the new partner quietly takes charge of the content that appears in the magazine as well. "Everyone knows what's going on but no one says it aloud. There is no need to bring difficulty on ourselves," says NBA Time's Mr Zheng.

Ironically, some investors say the restrictive nature of the media market actually adds to its appeal. In many domestic industries, the relative ease of entering the market has led to oversupply and price wars. But some see the media as a charmed sector offering huge returns for those willing to brave the bureaucratic hassles. "There is no room to grow in property anymore, but the media sector is just taking shape," explains Liu Gang, a property developer in the northern city of Tianjin, who has recently made forays into media.

Some worry that this is leading to a market dominated by opportunistic investors with little experience or interest in quality writing and editing.

With policies still delicately termed "unclear"-in reality, Chinese regulations ban both private and foreign involvement in media-publishers are under pressure to recoup investments quickly rather than take the time to build a strong team of writers and editors.

"No one can have long-term considerations in this industry because the policies can change at any time," says Hu Shuli, managing editor of a financial monthly, Caijing, which has started to turn a profit in its third year of operation.Yet the new private investors are already driving reform in the industry.

One area is distribution. Many publishers of start-up magazines have chosen to side-step the state-run postal service, long the favoured distributor for its national reach, in favour of cobbling together private sales networks.

While the postal service requires three months to remit subscription fees to publishers, private distributors generally take less than a month, affording the magazines more breathing room and greater control over print-run decisions.

New investors are breathing fresh air into other areas. Coming next month: Redegg, a monthly focused on Internet entrepreneurs and culture. China already has many magazines about technology, but Redegg hopes to capture the youthful hipness of the New Economy, from articles on the latest trends and styles of Silicon Valley to arresting magazine covers, in neon colours almost devoid of text, designed by a 20-year-old Swede. "Chinese magazines are not very cool," says a hyper-charged Hung Huang, CEO of publisher China Interactive Media Group, as she charges through the company's warehouselike offices ordering a photo reshoot one minute and approving an advertising contract the next.

Similarly radical ideas infuse the company's other new venture, R magazine, originally an English-language entertainment guide that will be relaunched next month as a bilingual publication. Its youthful editorial staff, which includes its South African founder alongwith several Americans, will each be charged with writing reviews, shooting digital photographs, and updating the magazine's Web site-a departure from the traditional Chinese media where these roles are sharply divided. Restaurant critics will be critical; music writers will steer clear of reviewing bands whose members are also friends.

"I wouldn't have gone into this if I could only be a propaganda machine," says Ms Hung. "We want to bring good reporting back into a market that has been lacking it for a long time."