The Murdoch touch.

The article focuses on the Hong Kong's most profitable newspaper "The South China Morning Post." Publisher of an English-language daily with a circulation of just 110,000 in a city that's 97% Chinese, South China Morning Post (Holdings) Ltd. earned $68 million--after taxes--on $118 million in revenues in the fiscal year 1992. In late 1986 to early 1987, the owners sold the paper to Media Tycoon Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Ltd. In buying the Post, Murdoch saw something that escaped the sellers: a tight labor market and a surging middle class of Chinese job-hoppers who eagerly pored over the Post's classified help-wanted advertisements. Since Murdoch acquired the Post, classified lineage has nearly trebled and rates have been almost doubled. Such large employers as Hongkong Bank and Cathay Pacific are virtually permanent job advertisers.