Jim Clancy (anchor and correspondent, CNN International): We're talking about one of the most exciting parts of news today, and that is the situation in China. When you consider that here's a country of 1.3 billion people that has plans to move 400 million people in the next 20 years from the countryside to existing cities or to cities that haven't even been built. They're not even sure there's enough sand in the country for the bricks to build the schools, the roads, the bridges, the hospitals and everything that's going to be needed.

Here's a country that's undergoing dramatic change, and the entire news media has to be concerned about that story because of its sheer magnitude. There are a lot of people who say the Chinese are going to dominate the entire world economy. They're already going around to Venezuela, buying up oil contracts, copper contracts and other things. They are going to be a major player that's going to affect every economy in the world. And we're not just going to cover that story; we're going to be obsessed with it in the news media in the decades ahead - and with good reason.

What role do we have to play in it? We have a panel of experts, and some guests out of Beijing. We're going to start talking about the Chinese media, the Chinese themselves - how they see their world, what they want to cover, what problems they confront. Then we're going to look at the Internet - a very exciting area that some people believe is going to push the envelope there - and China's unique approach to the Internet.

Finally, we hope to spend the most amount of time talking about ourselves. We want to know what role we have to play, and what are the rules when you get into the Chinese market. And if there's this lure of profit - what's the price to be paid?

Professor Peter Herford is a professor of journalism at Shantou University in China. He was formerly with CBS News. He has described himself as a recovering journalist. Also joining us is Dr. Wen Guang Shao. He is with Phoenix News & Entertainment, a Hong Kong-based media company. He's straddling that line between Chinese media and international media and, as we'll hear from him, he gets away with a lot more.

Also joining us is Vincent Brossel. He is head of the Asia desk for Reporters Without Borders, and he has a good insight into what is going on for the people trying to report the news inside China today. Also with us is Jaime FlorCruz, CNN's Beijing bureau chief, who has had a lot of experience, since age 20, in China.

We're also talking with David Schlesinger, global managing editor of Reuters, which is firmly in Beijing, has probably been there longer than any other international company in the world. Also joining us by satellite is Ms. Huang Hung. She is the CEO of China Interactive Media Group, a very important company. She runs a Seventeen magazine. She also has a magazine format that is like Time Out [Time Out Beijing], and her own talk show.

For a brief summary of the scene, I'm going to turn to Tara Duffy, CNN correspondent in Beijing, for a look at the differences between what is happening in China and what's being reported.

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Tara Duffy (CNN correspondent): Protests in Taiwan against the Chinese government. Images of practitioners of falun gong, banned in China as an evil cult six years ago. The crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. The late premier, Zhao Ziyang, who was dismissed in 1989 for sympathising with the Tiananmen protesters at the square. But this is how it often looks when you try to watch these stories from inside China [screen goes black] - government censors have the ability to black out stories they deem too sensitive. Reporters in China run the risk of detention or imprisonment for covering sensitive topics, like Zhao's funeral last January, or anti-Japanese protests in April, when the government decided it needed to control them. At one of those protests, CNN's cameraman was stopped from videotaping by police.

Wen-chun Fan (CNN cameraman): They took us away and held us for about an hour. During that time, we weren't sure what was going to happen. Sometimes they'll take your tapes, sometimes they'll confiscate your equipment. Most of the time they'll ask you to write a lengthy confession detailing why you were there, who told you to be there, and then they'll make you sign something that says that you broke Chinese law and were doing illegal reporting.

Tara Duffy: Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong resident working for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, also ran into trouble with the authorities. He has been in detention since April. His wife told reporters he was taken into custody while trying to obtain unpublished interviews of the late premier Zhao. China's Foreign Ministry says the journalist is being held for spying for “foreign intelligence,” not because of the story he was working on.

Kong Quan (Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman): The Chinese government has enough evidence of these suspected crimes, and he himself does not deny it.

Tara Duffy: Ching's case is not unique. These photos were taken of New York Times researcher Zhao Yan before he was taken into custody in September. He was initially charged with leaking state secrets and now is under investigation for fraud. He has no contact with either his lawyer or his family.

As a Western journalist, I have more freedom than my Chinese colleagues working both for international media and for state-run media. If I want to interview dissidents or others the Chinese government wants to silence, I do run the risk of detention. But the risks for those we interview are much greater. Dai Qing is a former reporter who has paid the price. After pointing out environmental problems with the controversial Three Gorges dam development, she was imprisoned for 10 months.

Dai Qing (journalist): The news is controlled, in the hands of the Propaganda Department.

Tara Duffy : And sometimes the controls are less than subtle. Here, unidentified security agents physically threw journalists out of an unauthorised news conference called by South Korean lawmakers early this year. For the most part, our movements here in the capital are not strictly controlled, but we're trying to film on Tiananmen Square on the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. There's a heavy police presence, so we'd better stop here - another reminder that pushing the limits for access only goes so far.

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Jim Clancy: Vincent Brossel, give us an idea of what it's like for journalists in China.

Vincent Brossel (head of Asia desk, Reporters sans frontières): First, we have to make a distinction between Chinese journalists and the foreign journalists working in China. For the Chinese journalists, obviously things have changed in the past 10 years. But they have two big authorities above them - first, the Propaganda Department, which is very strong at controlling sensitive news. Every week, or every month now, there's a big meeting in Beijing with the Propaganda Department and the main editors in the country, and they are reminded that “you don't have to cover this story, you cannot go to this place or talk about this subject.” So it's a daily routine of censorship, and most of the journalists have to assume this self-censorship.

Jim Clancy: Huang Hung, do you see that as the situation that's developing in China - the daily censorship? Do you feel that?

Huang Hung (CEO, China Interactive Media Group): It's a bit exaggerated to say that we feel it daily. These departments, we don't feel daily. Historically, the Chinese media have moved forward quite a bit. When we started in the lifestyle industry, there was a regulation that says you can't publish anything with bare skin two inches below the chin, so we constantly got censored on any fashion photography. But 10 years later, they have fashion shows on television, Vogue and Cosmo - all these magazines are in China now.

On the other hand, for social and political coverage, you feel probably a lot more the control of the government on the news media industry. There have been some relaxations. There's a Chinese periodical called Sanlian Life Weekly, which put the picture of the doctor who wrote a letter that exposed the SARS situation to the world on its cover. In the old days, given the impression one might have in the West about China, this editor should be gone - in jail or whatever. But he didn't go. He did get a slap on the wrist, a little talk: “Next time you do something outrageous, can you tell us beforehand?” But nothing ever happened to him and he continues to be the editor of this journal. So, historically, I think we have moved forward quite a bit, for some of us to feel actually comfortable to operate here.