Eight departments: Support physical bookstores in serving nationwide reading, encourage private bookstores to pursue differentiated development.

To implement the Regulations on Promoting Nationwide Reading and fulfill the tasks set out in the 2026 Government Work Report, the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, the Central Social Work Department, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the National Cultural Heritage Administration recently jointly issued the Notice of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and Other Departments on Supporting Physical Bookstores in Serving Nationwide Reading. The notice proposes improving the quality of bookstore supply, implementing the "Thousand Store Managers" growth training program, enhancing bookstores' ability to select titles, establishing a public database of "bookstore keynote speakers," promoting the renewal of store outlets by Xinhua Bookstores, encouraging differentiated development of private bookstores, and relying on bookstores to carry out reading promotion volunteer service activities. It calls for cultivating distinctive reading spaces, creating a batch of landmark bookstores, distinctive bookstores, themed bookstores, and "small and beautiful" spaces, integrating them into urban renewal initiatives, and incorporating them into complete communities and the 15-minute urban convenient living circles. The notice stipulates support for bookstores to participate in public cultural services, undertake the operation and management of grassroots nationwide reading facilities, library collection services, and reading activities, promote deep integration between bookstores and public cultural institutions, and incorporate them, in light of actual conditions, into the county-level public library central-branch library system and the scope of support for new types of public cultural spaces. It calls for empowering the development of scholarly campuses, encouraging bookstores to build off-campus reading guidance classrooms and reading practice bases, participate in the construction of school reading spaces, themed reading activities, and the renewal and supplementation of library books, and support the construction of campus bookstores. The notice makes clear the need to strengthen fiscal support and guidance, with local governments supporting bookstores to participate on an equal footing in undertaking government purchase of services projects such as public reading services, the central government providing performance-based rewards, and localities driving book reading and sales through methods such as distributing subsidized book purchase vouchers and nationwide reading consumption vouchers. It calls for helping bookstores reduce costs and increase efficiency, encouraging state-owned enterprises and public institutions to reduce or exempt rents and other fees, optimizing the procedures for handling licenses for diversified operations of bookstores, advancing online-offline integration, promoting bookstore map navigation, and continuously regulating the order of online book distribution. The notice proposes that all localities and relevant departments establish and practice a correct view of political performance, refine measures in light of local conditions around the various work arrangements, establish collaborative promotion mechanisms, and foster a strong atmosphere in which all sectors of society support bookstore development and participate in nationwide reading.