The empire he presides over would be the envy of almost any western media baron. As chairman of the Guangzhou Daily Group, Dai Yuqing is one of China’s most influential newspapermen, overseeing 19 newspaper and magazine titles. He is also president of the group’s eponymous flagship broadsheet, based in the capital of southern Guangdong province, which claims a circulation of 1.8m and last year took revenues of more than Rmb2bn ($280m, €180m, £140m) for the first time.

Guangzhou Daily’s circulation is not far behind the world’s largest newspapers, but its numbers are rising at a time when those of most western publishing giants are headed in the other direction. And unlike the Chinese Communist party’s bland People’s Daily, whose circulation of about 2m copies is boosted by a captive audience of government units and state-owned enterprises across China, the Guangzhou Daily’s success has been market-driven. It runs to more than 50 pages a day, most in full colour, with four daily regional supplements serving other cities in the Pearl River delta, Guangdong’s manufacturing belt.