This BBC story looks at how the growing middle class in China may be forcing the country's rulers to loosen controls on the mass media just a bit.

But don't get carried away and think it's a relatively free society: China reportedly has more journalists in jail than any other country.

Some excerpts:

Chen Luyu is an unlikely revolutionary.

Known as China's Oprah, she's a petite 30-something Chinese chat show hostess, who invites celebrities and ordinary people onto her sofa to talk about their lives, and tell their stories.

Chen Luyu's chat show is very popular

But her programme, A Date with Chen Luyu, is part of a dramatic upheaval that's taking place in China's media industry.

Ever since the communists came to power in 1949, television, radio and newspapers in China have been little more than a heavily censored government mouthpiece.

Now widespread economic reforms and the arrival of the internet might slowly be weakening the government's once tight grip.

As a child growing up in 1970s Shanghai, Chen Luyu said she remembered that there was only one television in the compound where she lived.

"All the children would gather round the one set, all sitting on these small wooden stools, watching the TV," she said.

Then there were just one or two television channels, with only a few hours of programming each day.

Since then China has really opened up. The country's staggering economic growth has lead to a rising middle class, interested not in old-style state propaganda, but leisure, fashion, celebrities and the outside world. ...

The story, by BBC reporter Dan Griffiths in Beijing, also talks about how the Chinese government is trying to control what Chinese people can read on the Internet, but that's becoming increasingly difficult to do.

So if I type in words like "Dalai Lama" or "human rights" into a search engine in either Chinese or English, up pop links to several websites, but when I click on them I can't get access.

Whilst researching this article neither the BBC news site nor the BBC Chinese Service site were accessible.

But if I go to the websites of several other well known international news organisations - albeit in English, but that not a problem for many Chinese students and professionals - I can read whatever I want.

It's a sign that no matter how hard the Chinese government would like to decide what its citizens see, it simply cannot control access to all parts of the web.