FHM China's first covergirl was actress Zhao Wei, featured below a large headline reading "Zhao Wei, Opium of the Youth". Certainly, Zhao is pretty, but her allure hints at a new trend in consumerism and sexual mores in China. Publishers of men's magazines have identified Asia, and China in particular, as the biggest market of the future, banking on an increasingly sophisticated generation of local men to buy their publications.

　　Pretty but more sexual covergirls are employed to draw a new affluent brand of male reader, which in turn attracts high-value advertisers. China's men's magazines are not as popular as those specially tailored for female readers and most stick to a diet of business, health and men's lifestyle articles, says Zhang Bohai, vice chairman of the state-run China Periodicals Association. Girls are entering the editorial equation, slowly. "Publishers have to be careful," says Zhang. "They cannot go too far with this sexy kind of content." Sexy content isn't difficult to find in Chinese media however. Most national newspapers held the presses when sociologists from the prestigious Renmin University in Beijing late last year collected votes for the "top 10 sex-related news pieces" of 2003. They'll hold another sex ballot this year. Scantily clad girls are no longer so difficult to find in Chinese media. State news wire Xinhua has closely followed the ongoing Chinese craving for beauty pageants, regularly running photos of bikini-clad beauty queens on Chinese beaches. Internet portals also offer Chinese men multi-media animated clips of local and foreign beauties that can be downloaded to mobile phones.

　　Covergirls put a face on what's become a very lucrative publishing niche. China's Esquire, published in China since 1999, currently has a circulation of 326,000. Most of those sales are reported in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou according to Trends, the Chinese company licensed to produce the magazine for international publishing giant Hearst. Beijing-headquartered Trends publishes several international titles in China, including Cosmopolitan, FHM and Harper's Bazaar. Glamour sells, but there are boundaries to decency in China which publishers appear careful to respect. In other words, no nudity.

　　In Europe and the US FHM sells on a dependability for putting mostly-naked famous women on its cover. Hearst International's chief executive George Green told the South China Morning Post on a recent Beijing visit that he always lets local publishers decide what to print. "It's going to be an interpretation and clearly will not be as raw as western titles," said Green. Hearst is a 20 percent owner in Trends - the largest shareholder is the Ministry of Tourism with a 50 percent stake. The company's Esquire title has remained boringly faithful to a habit of putting western B-movie male and female actors on its China covers.