But there are only some 40 imported magazine titles so there's still huge potential. The government has also lifted restrictions on distribution for foreign publishers.

    Zhang says that the size and influence of the Chinese market are such that current and aspiring players cannot afford to be absent from the market.

    "The quality of most Chinese magazines is not satisfactory," he says. "They are under great pressure when more and more international magazines come in the market. So in some way it stimulates domestic magazines to upgrade themselves."

    According to the London-based International Federation of the Periodical Press, the total value of imported publications in China was more than US$68.5 million in 2002, with 30,000 publications (including books) introduced into the marketplace. The organization also projected that ad spending in major magazine categories in China this year would grow between 30 and 50 percent year-on-year.

    Speaking at a recent Magazine Publishers Association breakfast forum, Jeff Sprafkin, CEO of Media Pacific, suggested Chinese magazine publishing will continue its fast growth along with the rest of the economy.

    In a "Business of Luxury" summit organized by the Financial Times and held in Shanghai earlier this year, luxury retailers from all over the world said they expected China to have 250 million potential purchasers of their goods by 2010.

    And the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has released reports that suggest China's middle class accounts for roughly 20 percent of the country's 1.3 billion population.

    This means there are between 200 million and 300 million people who have the purchasing power to buy luxury goods ranging from real estate, cars and computers to top-of-the-line mobile phones and high fashion and they need information to guide their purchasing.

    Zhang Juan, the editorial director of the Chinese Biba magazine, says that most of the top titles are in fashion, cars, business, and technology and that most of them are published under license from the West, mainly the United States and France.

    "Readers are more discriminating and sophisticated nowadays. What they need is the freshest and the latest," she says.

    "Western countries have dominated the fashion scene for a long time. That's why the successful magazines in China are imported from these countries. And that's why Chinese magazine editorial directors can be very young, mostly in their 30s while the editorial staff I've met in Europe are very senior, in their 50s or even 60s. All their lives, they have been working in the fashion industry."

    Conventional wisdom suggests early arrivals have an advantage. But for Vogue, that was not so.

    "Vogue aims at the very top of the market," says Newhouse. "So typically Vogue is not the first magazine to enter any market. It waits until the market and its consumers have reached at a certain level of development."

    After more than several years' planning, Chinese Vogue is finally coming out in all its glitz and glamour. Naturally, anticipation runs high.

    Says Angelica Cheung: "It is not a new thing to publish a fashion magazine but our approach and positioning are very different. We're the magazine that only talks about fashion. For other fashion magazines, one third of contents are general features talking about how to handle your career and office politics, and how to handle your sex life. Vogue teaches people more about style, art, sophistication and better living.

    "Each country's Vogue is different. There's no one formula to say what is the right way to do Vogue. Italian Vogue is totally pictures, French Vogue is chic and moody, British Vogue is very commercial. China's Vogue is for Chinese readers."