From the London Review of Books comes John Lanchester's biased but interesting article on Rupert Murdoch. Admittedly it's from the 5th February issue but well worth it for this anecdote:

He could be Dr Evil if he wanted, but he doesn't, because it would get in the way of business. The paradoxical proof of this comes in his actions in China, which are in one sense as despicable as anything he has ever done, and in another oddly comforting, since they prove as much as anything can that he is motivated not by ideology but by a simple need to keep doing business, and keep making ever bigger deals. The irony is that the events in China, which showed Murdoch finally abandoning any claim to the anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, muckraking pose he has for many years struck at every opportunity, were prompted by one of the few openly political speeches he has ever made. New telecommunications technology, Murdoch told an audience at Banqueting House in 1993, has 'proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere'. Murdoch's speech was reported all over the world. A month later the Chinese Government banned all satellite dishes in China, inconveniently for the man who had just spent $825 million in Hong Kong to buy the satellite channel Star TV. The Chinese Government knows how to make a supplicant eat shit, and in the years to come Murdoch was to pay Deng Xiaoping's daughter a substantial advance for a biography of her dad, back out of publishing Chris Patten's book East and West, ban the BBC World Service from the Star satellite, and slag off the Dalai Lama as 'a monk in Gucci shoes', as part of his strategy of appeasement. The Chinese Government enjoyed it, too. When Murdoch finally secured a meeting with Zhu Rongji, then one of the country's Vice-Presidents, in 1998, Zhu switched from talking via the interpreter to ask Murdoch a question in English.

He had heard, Zhu said, that Murdoch had taken out US citizenship when he wanted to operate a television network in America. Would he consider taking out Chinese citizenship to further his interests in China? Murdoch was clearly taken aback. Zhu watched his reaction for a moment, then turned to his entourage and repeated his question in Chinese - to general mirth.

(Found via Melissa)