It's time to come clean on listings

Ten Chinese news websites hope to be listed on the stock market, according to the influential paper Shanghai Securities News.

These include the websites of broadcaster China Central Television, Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily and other media outlets. One or two of them may complete their IPOs this year.

What ruffles me is not the listing itself. In a market economy, nothing is more unsurprising than companies seeking to go public, and it should apply to China, too, although some argue it is not a purely free market.