Walk down Zhapu Road in Shanghai’s historic Hongkou District and you’ll come across a small storefront at No. 189 that is gripping tight to a rapidly vanishing history. Inside, past the burgundy awning and wood-framed glass doors, Jiang Jun (姜俊), 65, stands behind stacks of close to 1,000 different publications. His shop is Shanghai’s last full-service newsstand, a faint echo of what was once a vast network of print media distribution spanning the city and the entire country.
To give a sense of the scale of the contraction, Shanghai’s Eastern Newspaper Kiosks (东方书报亭), a network of newsstands owned by China Post and a group of state-run media, including the Shanghai United Media Group (SUMG), had 2,120 locations at its peak in 2008. In the decade that followed, more than 500 of these closed, and by 2018, the last street kiosk on Huaihai Road in central Shanghai was finally dismantled, marking the end of an era for the once-ubiquitous newsstands that had long been defining features of cosmopolitan and information-hungry Shanghai.
Across China today, as social media and short video platforms like RedNote, WeChat, Douyin, and Weibo dominate the information landscape, a handful of newsstands like Jiang’s shop are nostalgic reminders of an era from the late 1990s to the start of the Xi Jinping era when print media flourished on the back of a vibrant advertising market.
This month, as state media announced that 2026 could prove to be a “pivotal year” (关键之年) for AI development, the latest upheaval in the media and information space, the new year brought the closure of at least 14 more newspapers across China. Against this backdrop, Jiang’s shop became an unlikely media sensation, drawing coverage from a number of outlets, including People’s Daily Online (人民网), The Paper (澎湃新闻), and Shanghai Observer (上观), the official news platform of the city’s CCP-run Jiefang Daily.
Media interest in this story stems at least in part from a national policy to promote greater interest in reading. China’s National Reading Promotion Regulations, which elevate reading and literacy to a national strategy, are set to take effect next month. The legislation mandates longer library hours, improved reading facilities, and government support for bookstores. All of this is aimed at fostering a reading-oriented society — and much of it is focused on print.
But the policy, introduced by the agency under the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department that manages news and publishing, comes at a time when diverse options for reading are evaporating.
Recent media reports have noted that the nearly 1,000 publications available at Jiang’s newsstand offer a level of variety not readily available online or on mobile devices. His customers, many of them older readers, seek something that algorithms cannot provide: serendipity and human curation. One customer told The Paper they are willing to make the journey across Shanghai not because they lack digital access, but because they value choice. “Here [the newspapers and magazines] are abundant and comprehensive,” they said. “You can’t find this anywhere else.”
Another customer crossed over from Pudong just to locate a magazine dedicated to soccer that was unavailable anywhere else.
What the media coverage in China cannot fully address this month is another dimension of the problem. The National Reading Promotion Regulations also require that publishers and digital platforms “enhance content management” and provide “state-approved high-quality content,” language pointing to tightening controls over what can be published at all. So while the policy encourages reading, it also narrows the space for substantive news reporting and discussion, a deepening trend over the past decade under Xi.
In the heyday of China’s print press, from the late 1990s to roughly the end of the 2000s, the developing commercial space offered harder-hitting coverage and even investigative reporting, despite Party control. Those days are long gone. For now, Jiang’s newsstand represents what remains of that vanishing space.
For all of the recent interest, however, Jiang’s operation remains precarious. In recent interviews, he said he works 14-hour days, and manages to stay afloat only because a cinema owner has offered him rent-free space for his shop. While a steady stream of customers — and considerable media attention — suggest there is a pool of determined demand, the fundamentals work against him. His customer base is aging, and given the broader contraction in print publishing, the biggest problem on the horizon may be sustaining inventory.
When Jiang retires, Shanghai will likely lose its last full-service newsstand, and with it, what devotees see as a small island of editorial variety amid a flood of algorithmic monotony and AI-generated slop.
