To Open China’s Market, Disney Faces Long March – Don Lee

From Los Angeles Times (link):

In little more than a year on the job, Stanley Cheung, Disney‘s chief in China, can lay claim to this: “The Lion King” is coming to Shanghai this summer.

“We have got to get our stories out,” says Cheung, a Hong Kong native who previously managed the Chinese operations of Johnson & Johnson and Pillsbury Co. He and his staff of 100 in Shanghai have to sell Disney’s characters without the benefit of a Disney Channel, something that the company has in India, its other key emerging market.

Beijing has placed tight controls on foreign media, preventing Disney from airing its programs frequently to the 340 million households with television sets.