Star Group, News Corp.'s television arm in Asia, is still committed to China even though it is unlikely to make any "significant" money from its loss-making Chinese business for up to two years due to regulatory restrictions, its chief executive said in a Financial Times report.

While the Chinese government has thrown open sectors such as manufacturing and retail, it has granted foreign companies only limited scope to enter the world's largest untapped media market.

This year, officials have backtracked from a planned cautious opening of the TV production business to foreign investment, citing concerns over "national cultural security."

"We were hoping that there would be deregulation allowing 51 - 49 joint ventures in co-production of programming, but it appears in the short term, we and other multinational media companies won't be able to take advantage of that," said Star chief executive Michelle Guthrie in an interview published on the newspaper's website.

However, Star has no plans to exit China but would instead tailor its investments to suit a business primarily driven by its Indian operations, according to Guthrie.

"We can't take the position, as some foreign media companies have, that we won't be in China potentially for the next five years," she said.

"If we tried to do that and then tried get in at a later date, we'd really be doing it from a standing start."

Star Group's Chinese operations are in effect subsidized by the company's 13-year-old and highly successful business in India, the Financial Times report said.

(Shenzhen Daily December 1, 2005)