Bruno Wu, New Media entrepreneur, knows a great deal about re-education. The 39 year old Wu from an elite Shanghai family whose grandmother was killed by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, and as a child, along with his parents, were sent to a farm collective for socialist re-education. Fast forward today to a different Shanghai where Dr. Wu, a Ph.D. in International Politics from Fudan University, reveals both financial and political lessons learned in China's short media march into the New Economy. As the co-founder and chairman of Sun Media Investment Holdings, he's ranked by Forbes as one of China's Top 100 richest entrepreneurs.

According to that article in Forbes, Wu has accumulated a fortune mostly by keeping a low profile and his investments include about 30 media related business enterprises, whose diverse interests span TV, marketing and telecommunications hardware. To the extent that there's a certain bravura and buzz about his ambitious China media plans, it may have previously come from his wife Yang Lan, a famous television anchor personality, now foundation director and even a national spokesperson for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

In several telephone conversations with CVN from Shanghai, Wu quickly acknowledged that his high profile wife, Lan "now devotes more time to her cultural charity" and he is now thrust fully into the business of making his media strategy succeed.

Apparently the division of commerce and culture is paying huge dividends for the enterprising couple. The China Private Media Report in last year's ranking of China's leading private media enterprises ranked Sun Media second only to Tom Group Ltd and in terms of profits, Sun Media Investment led the way with 1.8 billion RMB.

Sun Media Investment, a long time player in traditional media and the now the largest shareholder in a timely reverse merger completed last year, reveals a new media business model in the OTC listed company, Sun New Media Symbol SNMD.

Sun New Media highlights a shift from the B2C to a B2B business model. Their mission is to deliver content to capture multiple industry e-business communities. In short, Wu understands the principles of "push technology" and wants to monetize this delivered business information and create new transactional platforms. This plan is reinforced by another successful Chinese new media CEO and publisher and also blogger, Huang Hung of China Interactive Media Group. (CIMG)

" I think every media company is planning on expansion plans right now, and we are not any different. The only thing might be that we want to focus on our content first; in terms of segment of demographics as target audience and in terms of content," claims Hung in an e-mail with CVN.

Along his way, Wu has learned a few lessons from his other media ventures including Sun TV. Established with his wife Lan, they took the high road and attempted to market and deliver cultural and documentary programming, like Civilization to the Chinese. It seems that the Chinese were really just waiting for pop culture broadcasts like Super Girl. Even Sun TV's multi-medium link-up with net powerhouse Sina.com in 2001 failed to meet with the expected synergy success. He quietly admits it was "his waterloo" into China's unpredictable media market .

But like media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Wu now sees new media as one of the best strategies to gain much more than a toehold in mercurial regulatory Chinese media environment.

Take note global investors and VCs. Here's a quick snapshot of Wu's lessons learned from his China media experiences:
• Avoid any business model based purely on providing quality programming content.
• Do not anticipate government policy changes to meet your new business model.
• Do acquire or secure a brick and mortar business strategy before anything else.
• Click follows that development.
• If the click does not work there's still a business entity.
• Avoid narrow mass and regulatory heavy ventures for example, Satellite TV.

Fast forward to New York. Wu recently traveled to Wall Street for an investment road show for Sun New Media at the C.E. Unterberg Tobin Emerging Growth Opportunities Conference.

"Our goal is to become China's preeminent leader in the multimedia sector which spans from traditional print and television to the new mediums of online delivery," says the Chairman of the Board Wu.

The enterprising Wu seems quite conversant about the impact of netizens and the impactful push- pull convergence of the Net. Sure, the authorities still control media, but don't tell that to Wu's other ambitious Chinese media entrepreneurs like Focus Media's Jason Jiang or David Yu of Target Media.

Unlike Napoleon, Wu seems ready and poised for more battles having learned a few things or two from his own Chinese waterloo.