News Media Run by China Look Abroad for Growth

China's biggest state-controlled news organizations plan to spend billions of dollars to expand overseas as part of a government effort to improve the nation's image abroad and to create respected international news organizations. The country's increasingly wealthy media giants, which operate under China's censorship rules and according to its propaganda motives, are trying to acquire international media assets, to open more overseas news bureaus and to publish and broadcast more broadly in English and other languages. Many of them have already announced plans to hire English-speaking Chinese and foreign media specialists. The plan, first reported Monday in The South China Morning Post, includes the creation of a 24-hour news channel modeled on Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language news network, with correspondents around the world. In contrast to this effort, which several people in the Chinese media confirmed had been under consideration for months, global media companies are in retreat, laying off employees, closing news bureaus and struggling with a steep drop in advertising. But in China, a handful of state-controlled broadcasters and publishers have thrived, benefiting from China's soaring economy.