--FILE--Pedestrians walk past the headquarters of the South China Morning Post (SCMP) in Hong Kong, China, 19 May 2012. Alibaba Group, China's e-commerce giant, has bought the South China Morning Post (SCMP) and all other media assets from the SCMP Group, and has pledged to uphold editorial independence and to invest to strengthen the quality of the content. The acquisition, for an undisclosed amount, would combine Alibaba's digital strength with SCMP's editorial excellence, paving the way for the 112-year-old newspaper to transform into a global media entity covering China for readers around the world, said Joseph Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group. "SCMP is a unique property. It's the only English-language paper in Hong Kong that everybody will read... We see this as a great opportunity to create a unique product... it is for everybody who cares to know more about China and to understand it ¨C whether you are in New York or London or anywhere where English is spoken, " Tsai said in a wide-ranging interview with the Post from his Times Square office in Causeway Bay. He said the decade-old paywall for all SCMP news sites will come down shortly after the acquisition so that the newspaper can reach out to more readers around the world. "Some say the newspaper industry is a sunset industry. We don't see it that way. We see it as an opportunity to use our technological expertise and our digital assets to distribute news in a way that has never been done before, " he said.
