Photo

On top of all the countless misdeeds that could hurt the prospects of a Communist Party official in China under President Xi Jinping, a new one has emerged: failure to subscribe to the right newspapers.

In a stern warning, Harbin Daily, the party newspaper of a city in northeast China, called on cadres to prop up subscriptions. Such appeals are part of the annual year-end effort of Chinese party newspapers — not always the most gripping reading in the world — to shore up circulation numbers.

But in what may be a sign that readers are becoming harder to attract, the Harbin paper threatened punishment: Those who fail in this work will be named and shamed.

“Offices that subscribe too slowly or do not subscribe after being repeatedly reminded will be reported to the whole city,” the newspaper said in an article on Thursday.

(That the paper would feature an article like this on its front page may help explain its difficulty in drawing readers.)

Even before the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, newspapers played a major role in the Communist Party’s ideological campaigns and political life, and that role continued for decades.

But in recent years, the Internet has eroded the influence of the print news media, and party and government offices, eager to save money, have been cutting back on newspapers that tend to sit unread.

Figures from China’s publishing authorities show that newspaper profits in 2014 were down 12.8 percent from the year before. They do not break this down by party and nonparty papers.

Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said public indifference had caused party newspaper subscriptions to plunge.

“In the past, local governments would at least give face to some party papers, but now many are not willing to tackle subscriptions,” Mr. Zhan said.

The Harbin Daily article told party officials that subscribing to party publications was “an important political task.”

“Doing a good job with the circulation of party papers and party publications concerns safeguarding ideology, the central government’s spirit and communicating mainstream public opinion,” the article said.

It urged government agencies in Harbin to meet subscription quotas “uncompromisingly” and to fully recognize the “new situation” facing the circulation of party publications.

Even with their supply of compulsory readers, many party publications tend to inflate their circulation to attract advertisers, said Mr. Zhan, the journalism professor. For example, he said, Sichuan Daily was once ranked as having the world’s third-biggest circulation, with eight million subscribers.

The likelier number, Mr. Zhan estimated, is about 400,000, and the number of readers who work through its daily diet of reports on government announcements and speeches is probably somewhat lower.

Even though news is strictly censored in China, more market-oriented news outlets have experimented with enterprising journalism that appeals to readers, further squeezing the market share of party publications.

This week, Chen Min’er, the party secretary of Guizhou Province in southwest China, accused some officials of preferring online gossip to party newspapers. “Sooner or later, problems will arise,” Mr. Chen said. “If this situation continues, the party’s good policies will not take root and bear results.”

Other local governments have also been demonstrating their resolve to support the subscription drive. This month, a county in Jiangsu Province barred the use of public funds to buy nonparty publications. In October, an official in Gansu Province declared that reading party papers helps people tell right from wrong.

Li Ping, a newspaper retailer in Beijing, said that circulation figures had been maintained by official directives.

“There hasn’t been much change in subscriptions of party papers by government agencies over the past few years because the order comes from above,” Mr. Li said. “But very few papers are subscribed to by individual customers. Maybe 1 percent.”

Follow Owen Guo on Twitter @BJ_Southerner.