The E-Road to China.

In British business schools, they present a parable about two shoe salesmen sent to a remote African country. The first wires back (Remember, this parable is set in pre-Internet, e-mail times): "Am returning immediately. No one here wears shoes." The other simultaneously telegraphs: "Send a steamer load of shoes immediately. No one here wears shoes."

The object of the homily, of course, is the ability of some to see opportunity where others observe only adversity. And Lyric Hughes, looking at mainland China with all its communications problems - a limited number of PC users, a language based on different characters, an antiquated telephone system, which makes downloading a Web page painfully tedious, and a paranoid government that restricts the flow of information - sees through the hurdles to a population of 1.2 billion people emerging into modern technology, and sees the glass of opportunity as half empty - to be filled by her China Online.

China Online is not an attempt to become an Internet service provider for China, a Sino-version of America Online, as others are already filling that role. Instead, it is a sophisticated Web site intended to link U.S. government and business sources to China through articles and other materials.

Hughes came to building a Web site dedicated to providing economic and political analysis of China by a circuitous route, one that took her from childhood figure-skating prodigy to building a business selling advertising space in Chinese newspapers to American businessmen, and finally last year to the Internet.

Hughes was born (on both sides of the tree) to a family of traditional newspaper publishers. Her father gravitated from journalism to the diplomatic corps, and she traveled around the world to his postings, along the way learning to speak fluent Farsi, Japanese, and Chinese.

The turning point for her came on a trip to China in 1979 when, bored with the usual diplomatic receptions, she asked to see a Chinese newspaper, and her hosts arranged a tour of Yangchen Wanbad in Shanghai, South China's largest daily, where she discovered that the paper was starving for overseas advertising, but didn't have the foggiest idea how to get it. From that meeting, Hughes became a media rep for that one newspaper, and within four years, had 300 different agreements with mainland China publications. "My agreement," she points out with justifiable pride, "was the very first between any Chinese media and a U.S. company."

That, and her fanatic allegiance to the Chicago Bears, led to the first telecast of an American Super Bowl game via Chinese television in 1986. "I remember that when I first asked the network what it would charge for the Chinese rights, they told my offhandedly, 'Oh, around 200.'" Hughes assumed the "200" meant $200,000 and set out to raise six figures - only to learn, to her great relief, that the network meant $200.

From her media rep business, Hughes quickly grasped the potential for a Web site devoted to China, launching China Online in 1998; it is already receiving more than 1 million visitors a month and while Hughes doesn't divulge figures, industry sources say the site will have revenues this year of just over $2 million.

China Online gathers its information from a network of about 100 correspondents and experts, 65 of them in China, the rest in the U.S. The Web site makes its money from several different sources. While anyone can browse the home page, only those with annual subscriptions (which range from $600 to $12,000 a year, depending on usage) can access the site's gold mine of statistical and background information, much of it mined from Chinese government sources.

Another revenue source is royalties from Reuters, the on-line editions of the Wall Street Journal, and others who pick up China Online's in-depth analyses of what is really going on inside the People's Republic.

While the PRC government is notorious for attempting to control information, and the articles posted don't usually toe the party line, Hughes says there has never been a single attempt at censorship or blocking access to the site.

Hughes sees China Online as a two-way turnpike, with overseas businessmen obtaining information about China (Australia is its second biggest market after the U.S.), and the site acting as a trading organization for companies to sell into China. The site now has close to four million users, and Hughes expects that number to double by next year.

It seems Hughes, seeing the allegorically "barefoot" population of China, has dispatched an e-mail that says, "Please send a steamer load of shoes."

LYRIC HUGHES

President and CEO 

China Online L.L.C.

"My agreement was the first between any Chinese media and a U.S. company."

Age: 46

Birthplace: Denver, CO

Family: Separated; "a single mom." Children: daughters Harmony, 15, Aria, 4, and son Devin, 11. "I didn't carry through the musical name tradition with Devin because I didn't want to see him teased by the kids on the playground."

Education: University of Chicago, Near-Eastern Studies and Civilizations

Diversions: A die-hard Chicago Bears football fan and a figure skater. "My mother skated until she was eight months pregnant with me, and I was skating on ice before I walked"

Favorite wine: An Australian Shiraz. "I go there so often and the Shiraz is wonderful, but it's so hard to keep track of the vintners and get the same thing twice."

Favorite Web site: "Aside from China Online? Myfamily.com and Ancestry.com."