Four women who shape Beijing

Huang Hung thought she knew what women want. So she jumped at a chance to run a women's magazine.

A high-flying businesswoman with experience as a consultant, commodities trader, and venture capitalist notched on her belt, she leapt at the chance, as she puts it, to influence a new generation of Chinese consumers.

"It's rare to get a project that is heart and soul, as well as brains," she says.

But as it turned out, her ideas and her readers' were different. In short order, Ms. Hung, like many successful entrepreneurs, quickly learned to adapt.

Women like Hung make up almost 20 percent of the country's entrepreneurs, according to the China Association of Women Entrepreneurs. They're attracted, experts say, by an atmosphere that measures them largely by results rather than gender, by the allure of calling the shots, and by the chance to put their stamp on everything from Beijing's skyline to discovering new artists.

These self-made women have risen from the ranks of an urban workforce that is now 42 percent female, according to a Chinese government white paper. While their status has improved considerably in the past five decades, women are still concentrated in lower-end jobs. Rapid economic reforms have offered new opportunities for women in private enterprises, but they have also meant layoffs from state enterprises.

Starting a company can mean circumventing such constraints - though the challenges can be daunting.

"Women like to put their love into their products and services. They're determined," says Shi Qingqi, executive vice-president of the women entrepreneurs association.

Like so many Chinese, women entrepreneurs are leaving behind any qualms about capitalist enterprise. Many have studied abroad. And as they set up shop, they're acutely aware of their role in shaping a new China - changing corporate culture, encouraging creativity, and striving to operate by international standards in a country where a weak legal system means that copying is rampant and business figures are often fuzzy.

Few have a sense of limitation. "I believe knowledge is power," says restaurant owner Zhang Lan, echoing the sentiments of many businesswomen. "I don't have people to rely on, so I have to be self-sufficient."

What follows are the diverse experiences of four women who are shaping things for themselves in Beijing.

After Hung took over the fledgling I-Look in 1999, its pages reflected her own passion for social justice.

As it turned out, women reared amid deprivation - the forced relocations, frenetic political campaigns, and drab Mao suits of the Cultural Revolution - had other ideas. "They wanted the dream," Hung says. "Chinese women are hungry for fashion and lifestyle."

Surveys of readers revealed such a disconnect with her own values, she says, that they made the confident, no-nonsense publisher cry. But she swallowed hard, pulled herself out of day-to-day editorial decisions, and redirected her efforts. Today, 80 percent of the magazine's 50,000 readers are individual subscribers - a point of pride for Hung, who says subscriptions are still relatively rare in China. In the next two years, she expects 60 to 70 percent growth of the three magazines she oversees.

Today, Hung, who is CEO of the China Interactive Media Group, oversees three magazines, all licensed: I-Look, Seventeen, and TimeOut Beijing, a listings and city-culture franchise that has counterparts in other major cities.

For Hung, the challenge has been to understand a culture that she left at an early age and returned to fully only in 1991. In the early 1970s, she was selected by Mao as one of 28 young teens to study in the US - the goal apparently being to create a future generation of savvy diplomats. "Oops," says Hung, smiling wryly.

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