Ekkehard Rathgeber, vice president of Bertelsmann Direct Group East Asia and General Manager of Shanghai Bertelsmann Culture Industry Co. Ltd, noted that Bertelsmann is implementing its new global strategy in China, while speeding up the efforts to strengthen name recognition locally.

Thomas Middelhoff, chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann AG, recently declared a significant change in Bertelsmann's global strategy: in order to realize the company's long-term target of transferring traditional off-line business onto the Web, Bertelsmann will focus on developing core content services together with e-commerce.

Bertelsmann formed up the Direct Group in December last year, which combined the company's traditional book and music clubs with the newly born Bertelsmann E-commmerce Group, according to Ekkehard.

The key strategy is to build up a far-reaching platform based on both the traditional sources and digital technologies, and to provide customers with more direct and convenient access to all the Bertelsmann media products and services.

According to Ekkehard, Bertelsmann Book Club, launched in 1997, had recruited 1.5 million Chinese members so far, making it the largest book club in China.

To meet customer demand and improve services, the company started an on-line media house, BOL China (www.bolchina.com), to serve as an Internet platform that provides information services for the media and entertainment products in China.

"Currently, Bertelsmann has forged close cooperation with more than 100 Chinese publishers and audiovisual companies and become one of the major channels for Chinese customers to obtain high-quality media products," Ekkehard said.

"We can never find a solid basis for our business here unless we can contribute our part to China's cultural development, and for a media company like us, one of the most important tasks is to fully participate in the growth of local communities," said Ekkehard.

(Xinhua 02/12/2001)