"Huanle Chengshi (Joyful City)," a news weekly featuring information about China's flourishing entertainment industry, hit newsstands in Beijing at the weekend.

It is the second entertainment tabloid to appear on the market over the past two months.

Thanks to the inflow of both private capital and foreign investment, competition among the media in general has been hotting up in China in recent years.

As a result, new readership bases have appeared. Newsstands are now flooded with newspapers catering for specific groups, which was quite rare 10 years ago.

As the market for sports and computer publications has been carved up by several existing players and the room for newcomers is minimal, investors are focusing on entertainment publications - an area that is still far from fully developed.

The prospect is quite alluring, since there is not even one large-scale national entertainment newspaper currently available. Newcomers will not be met by fierce competition and the possibility for success is huge.

"Joyful City," jointly invested in by Joyful Media, a film and TV production company and "21st Century Career Post," has expressed its ambition to become the top dog in the market.

"Our object is to become the most authoritative entertainment news weekly in China," said Zhang Hao, editor-in-chief of "Joyful City."

The tabloid boasts it will stick to the principle of being "avant-garde," to always lead the lifestyles of young people in big cities.

However, from what its first issue displayed, its standard is below all of the hype.

It seems to stick to the paparazzi-style approach, which Hong Kong tabloids are famous for, but has long been rejected by the Chinese mainland media.

The cover story in the first issue deals with the latest gossip news of Hong Kong comic superstar Stephen Chow.

This, as insiders have pointed out, reflects the dilemma that all Chinese entertainment media are confronted with: The local entertainment industry is still young and there is not enough news.

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