WORLD PRESS TRENDS - World Association of Newspapers

CHINA
Commentary - China Education Daily
China’s newspaper industry is very polarised. A few huge titles
circulate more than a million copies an issue, but there are many
that circulate less than a thousand. A few are very profitable,
while plenty make consistent losses. Rural publishing remains
depressed, while city newspapers are booming.
The city newspaper market has become more and more active
since China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001.
Price wars have broken out in several cities. They began in
Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province in south China.
Guangzhou Daily, Nanfang City News, Yangcheng Evening News,
Information Times and News Express either cut prices directly,
increased the number of their pages, or gave away items like
TV sets, cars, microwave ovens and so on. The war then spread
from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and other cities. In Shenzhen
the city authorities stepped in to force the Nanfang City News to
stop publishing there after it attempted to compete with the
local newspapers.
Price wars soon reached provincial capitals, such as Changsha,
Chengdu, Nanchang, Nanjing, Wuhan, Xi’an, Zhengzhou and
in several midsize cities, such as Dalian, Qingdao, and Wenzhou.
Some provincial authorities responded by fixing a mandatory
price for all city newspapers. For instance, the Department for
Press and Publishing in Hubei ordered all newspapers
distributing in Wuhan to sell at RMB 0.50, and the Jiangsu
government has forbidden any newspaper distributed in
Nanjing to sell for less than RMB 0.30. In other provinces,
publishers have formed tacit agreements or cartels to fix prices.
Some newspapers’ subscription prices and promotions in 2003
CHINA
City newspapers published in the same area tend to have very
similar cover prices, as one might expect from a competitive
industry. The cover prices of provincial-level government
newspapers vary more widely, and those of special newspapers
(economic, educational, cultural and other industrial
newspapers) more widely still. This is because they don’t worry
much about demand and profitability, so there is no market
mechanism for setting their prices.
Distribution of cover prices (logarithmic scale)
No. titles
1,000
100
10
1