Bruce Dover’s Rupert Murdoch’s Adventures in China, reviewed by Eric Ellis, offers new details about Newscorp’s entry to the Middle Kingdom.

UPDATE: Donald Greenlees has an article in the International Herald Tribune saying that the Murdoch-owned Far Eastern Economic Review commissioned and then spiked this book review:

In one of the first tests of The Review’s independence under Murdoch ownership, Restall has admitted to getting “cold feet” about the publication of an article destined for the magazine.
Restall’s acknowledgement has set off a flurry of Internet controversy about whether some Dow Jones editors might already have started to second-guess the preferences of the new boss.
Restall first commissioned in January, and then declined to publish, a review of a critical book about Murdoch’s business forays into China in the 1990s, “Rupert’s Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife.”

Some highlights of the review (Full version here on Danwei):

So Bruce Dover, the Australian ex-journalist who was Murdoch’s ambassador to China for much of the 1990’s, is to at least be commended for his bravery in going where others cast from the Murdoch mafia have blinked, in ‘Rupert’s Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife’ (Penguin Books, 2008).

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Other revelations are fun, portraying Rupert as anything but a megalomanic media mogul; a bored Murdoch walking out of the official Hong Kong 1997 handover ceremony and getting lost in Tsimshatsui’s rainswept backstreets; “Mr Grumpy” ordering a $3,500 bottle of wine in a sleazy Beijing bar in a fit of corporate pique; almost being mown down by a bus as he crosses Shanghai’s Bund and delightedly crowing about the $1 haircut he received on a Shanghai sidewalk.

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