HONG KONG -- Hao Fang, editor of Rolling Stone magazine's new Chinese edition, can't print much about sex or drugs. But in China, even rock-and-roll can be politically sensitive -- as the cover of the first issue illustrates.

Mr. Hao chose an inaugural cover image of Cui Jian, one of the first Chinese musicians to incorporate Western rock into his songs and a Bob Dylan-like master of lyrics with multiple meanings. Mr. Cui's most famous song, "Nothing to My Name," was an anthem to students during the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests, though it never mentions revolution or protest. After the military crackdown, Mr. Cui was sometimes treated as a dissident, and he laid low for years.

Yet, the Rolling Stone article avoids mention of Tiananmen or anything political. "Of course, he used to be a controversial person," says Mr. Hao, 42 years old. "But it's neither in the media's interests nor his interests for now" to talk specifically about that past.

Rolling Stone's China launch this month illustrates the possibilities -- and difficulties -- of journalism in one of the world's most censored media markets. Through cultural essays and profiles of rock stars, Mr. Hao and his publishers -- a state-owned music publisher and a Hong Kong company that has licensed the title from Rolling Stone publisher Wenner Media -- must satisfy two increasingly competing masters: Chinese readers looking for edgier content and the Communist Party looking to rein in dissent.

Magazines are experiencing a commercial renaissance in China, as consumers with more disposable income turn to glossy monthlies for guidance on shopping, entertainment and lifestyle. Nielsen Media Research says marketers spent about 23 percent more, or a total of about $770 million, on magazine advertising in China last year than in 2004, based on published rate-card figures. Adding to an already crowded market, Advance Publications' Vogue launched a Chinese edition last year.

Yet in recent months, Chinese censors have tightened their grip on dissent in the news media and on the Internet. In December, the government sacked the editor of the bold daily Beijing News, and then in January shut down the highly regarded weekly Freezing Point supplement to the China Youth Daily, which has since reopened with a new editor. The past year also brought setbacks for global media companies such as Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc. and News Corp., which have been clamoring to establish a presence in the world's biggest market of television viewers. In this climate, publishing any new foreign media project in China is notable, let alone launching a title grounded in American counterculture.

At the same time, rock and other youth music are coming of age in China, creating the demand for a magazine like Rolling Stone. During China's Cultural Revolution, in the 1960s, love ballads were treated like pornography, and people who were found listening to rock-and-roll were labeled "devils" and could have ended up in jail. Since then, China has witnessed a pop-culture explosion. The Internet, international travel and foreign movies have spread information about foreign entertainment and lifestyles across much of the country. Today, China's most successful music stars either are rockers like Mr. Cui or style themselves on American rappers and R&B crooners.

Rolling Stone's China editor is now at the center of all these changes, both in media and in music.

Growing up listening to the classical canon, Mr. Hao became a fan of rock in the late 1980s after watching the film "Apocalypse Now," with its musical mix of Richard Wagner and the Doors. He first came across the U.S. Rolling Stone magazine in the late 1980s from copies brought back to China by returning exchange students, and later subscribed to it from an import company.

"It was a huge source of information about the foreign world, about what it is like outside of China," he says.

Mr. Hao's Rolling Stone aims to chart China's cultural influences in a way that satisfies increasingly plugged-in readers. The first issue, already selling out in some cities, features an equal mix of Chinese and foreign entertainers, with articles on the rock band U2 and American actress Jessica Alba, as well as Mr. Cui and Mu Zi Mei, a Chinese blogger infamous for her sexually provocative diary.

Yet, the magazine must also satisfy the government, which has the final say on each issue. The magazine's U.S. editors create the international content for the Chinese edition and confer with Mr. Hao's team. Wenner Media doesn't sign off on content.

"Our magazine was founded with the purpose of entertaining and educating readers about music and culture," says Robby Yung, chief strategy officer for One Media Group, the magazine's Hong Kong-based publisher. "Our magazine was not founded, as was Rolling Stone in the U.S., as a voice for a particular generation that was very politically charged."

Like all Chinese periodicals, Rolling Stone China is technically published by a government-sponsored organization, or zhuguan danwei. In Rolling Stone's case, that is state-owned music publisher China Record Corp.

For Chinese media, the zhuguan danwei would be the normal government point of contact for a process of "prior censorship," says David Bandurski, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong's China Media Project. Rather than come in with a black pen, Mr. Bandurski says, China's propaganda officials usually rely on editors to censor publications themselves based on a growing collection of government missives. There is no central database of subjects considered off-limits by the government, making editors' jobs even harder.

"The government issues orders and bans, what you can publish and cannot publish," Mr. Bandurski says. One unlikely ban he saw this fall: no coverage of yoga, presumably because of its loose connection to Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline banned by China.

Government censorship "is very nuanced, across the board from 'absolutely not' to 'report it a little more this way,' " Mr. Bandurski says.

China Record declined to comment on its relationship with Rolling Stone. Mr. Hao wouldn't detail his editorial processs -- "it's not so dramatic," he says -- but says his Rolling Stone will pointedly eschew Chinese politics, as well as drop some of the racier American content. "We are not going to import those things which are not suitable of the Chinese market," he says.

While Mr. Hao says there wasn't any particular internal controversy about choosing Mr. Cui, the cover has created buzz -- as crucial to a media enterprise in China as anywhere. "It says they are more willing to say things," says Chris Wu, the general manager of content for News Corp.'s Channel V Chinese music network. "Whether it will last, we don't know."

So Rolling Stone walks the same fine line as Mr. Cui -- who himself managed last fall to win government approval for his first big Beijing concert in over a decade.

"Cui Jian is the only person who can represent Chinese rock music," Mr. Hao says. "He has been only caring about his music and making tremendous progress on it, which many young people desire and have great passion for."

The magazine's article about Mr. Cui brushes over his political past. It says that one of his songs, banned because of its unusual rock style, was "unexpectedly interpreted and colored as an open protest between rock and roll and the government by some foreign media."

It quotes Mr. Cui as saying: "Don't always talk about the past, I am sick of talking about it." Mr. Cui's agent said the performer is on vacation in Europe and unavailable for interviews.

Other foreign titles in China -- including Vogue and the popular Cosmopolitan magazine, published by Trends Group, a joint venture of China's tourism ministry, Hearst Communications and International Data Group -- have survived commercially and legally by mostly sticking to a topic considered safe in contemporary China: consumption.

In China, Cosmopolitan forgoes its famous American sex quizzes to focus instead on shopping and relationships. "The secret of our success is that we are not a clone of the U.S. edition. We let the local publisher and editor interpret the brand with a local voice," says George Green, president of Hearst Magazines International, which owns and licensees Cosmopolitan. "We have never felt that the government has interfered in any way with what we publish," he says.

Rolling Stone's publishers say they are following that model, in China as well as in their 10 other international editions.

"Many of our foreign editions are principally entertainment magazines," explains New York-based Executive Editor Joe Levy. "That said, I have a Western perspective, and I do believe that the music and the culture carries a message of its own."