Kerry Stokes and Seven Network in China

Wheeler dealer Kerry Stokes (image source)

From the Australian Herald Sun:

Media mogul Kerry Stokes has pledged greater co-operation between the Seven Network and Chinese state media at a meeting in Beijing with China’s propaganda chief.

Mr Stokes made the promise at a meeting with Liu Yunshan, head of the Chinese Communist Party’s publicity department, in Beijing on Tuesday, official newsagency Xinhua reported.

Seven spokesman Simon Francis declined to provide more detail on the talks and would not be drawn on whether Mr Stokes also was visiting the group’s Beijing tractor dealership…

…After merging Mr Stokes’ private WesTrac Holdings business with Seven, the conglomerate now controls the Caterpillar tractor franchise for northeast China and has “significant business interests in the region”, he said…

… Mr Liu, also a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful Politburo, is responsible for media censorship and has called for “intensified efforts to enhance media supervision”, urging publicity departments to “help publicise the socialist core value system”.

Stokes and his company were involved in the relaunch of the English-language Shanghai Daily (see Danwei reports linked below), but according to an unreferenced claim in Wikipedia “Stokes’ private company, in conjunction with Shanghai People’s Press, is no longer running a business after five years in Shanghai.”