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Newspapers, Magazines and TV

Beijing offers a wide range English-language magazines and newspapers of interest to travellers, including Beijing This Month, Business Beijing, That's Beijing, City Weekend, Time Out, Beijing Weekend and China Daily. These are available, for free, at most four- and five-star hotels, in Sanlitun and in embassy-area bars and restaurants.

It's also easy get issues of popular imported English-language magazines, such as Time, Newsweek, Far Eastern Economic Review and The Economist and other foreign-language titles from the bookshops of four- and five-star hotels.

Beijing's larger hotels have satellite dishes that can receive dozens of channels from all over the world. America's CNN, NHK from Japan and Star TV from Hong Kong are staples. CCTV-9 is an international English-language channel provided by the central government, with programmes introducing Chinese political, economic and domestic news and information about the culture, Chinese language, economy, history and daily lives of the Chinese people.