Last October News Corp media baron Rupert Murdoch, the proud owner of social networking gorilla MySpace, announced that he was planning to develop MySpace China. Anyone who has studied the fates of American Internet companies in China can be forgiven for reacting to this bold pronouncement with a weary shudder. Yahoo and eBay have already run aground on the harsh rocks of the Chinese Internet market, and Google is sailing storm-tossed seas.

Having beaten that metaphor to death, I was interested to see an article in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago in which journalists Jason Dean and Geoffrey Fowler explore the likely management structure for MySpace China. It's a ways from launch, but I can already see signs of MySpace's future problems in China.

--more at CNET Asia--