Not everyone, it seems is ready for China's covergirls. For now, FHM has a tight grip on Beijing's male magazine market. Its most formidable worldwide competitor appears to have done a double-take over ambitious plans for China. The UK's Dennis Publishing had planned to launch covergirl-heavy Maxim magazine in China in April of this year. "Maxim is publishing dynamite," Dennis' international publishing director, Kerin O'Connor said when the company announced the launch of a Chinese Mainland edition this spring. The Chinese edition has yet to appear.

　　It's not like there isn't room for more pretty girls, says Zhang Bohai. "The market hasn't taken off yet. Maxim could be the first one to hit the market with sexy contents as its major selling point." The magazine will be unlikely to find Chinese women who will pose in the style of the western covergirls featured regularly by Maxim however, cautions Zhang.

　　Chinese men are the same as their counterparts worldwide, said O'Connor at a press conference to announce the launch of the China edition of Maxim:"They have the same kind of aspirations...and they have the same kind of interests."

　　Philip Shackleton often buys the Chinese editions of male magazines to keep track of the latest starlets. "Chinese girls could be the new thing. There's an awful lot of male interest in something exotic and they are very cute. They may just work best in China though as some western audiences prefer an aggressively sexy girl or big athletic sports stars disrobing on magazine covers. Chinese girls can be really sexy but they also stay cute and girl-nextdoorsy at the same time... Anyway, they ought to really spice things up."

　　Or perhaps not. Lad mags still have a long way to go to match China's best selling magazine, Reader, concedes Tom Gorman, a media analyst at CCI Asia Pacific. The bi-monthly mix of health advice and home-keeping tips shifts 800 million copies every fortnight, by far China's best selling magazine. And no, Reader doesn't do covergirls.