Ongoing financial woes at The South China Morning Post (SCMP), Hong Kong’s long running English-language newspaper (dating back over 100 years), are compelling it to make a play for the mainland, according to an article in the Asia Sentinel (as linked to on Twitter by @Danwei).

Speculation over a China move has been mounting since the paper named its first-ever mainland China editor Wang Xiaowei and its CEO, 33-year-old Kuok Hui-Kong (daughter of tycoon Robert Kuok), “was granted a rare one-on-one audience in Beijing with Wang Guangya, the director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office,” according to the article.

Gaining access to the mainland presents a host of financial opportunities for the cash-strapped paper, but media watchers speculate that such a move would also subject the SCMP under more editorial control by the government.

The SCMP may now hope for mainland-access rights to print and publish for the growing international communities in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. Business is business: perhaps Wang Xiangwei is a necessary trade. Whether the paper would lose its credibility along with that devil’s bargain, waits to be seen. The SCMP is on notice. If it becomes another China Daily, it will have no reason to exist for Hong Kong or China readers.

It will interesting to see how all of this pans out for Beijing readers and advertisers – in a market that’s already got a glut of free English-language media (yours truly included) the SCMP could have a hard time convincing readers and advertisers to pay up if it were to follow its current payment/subscription model.

Read more here.