Like the last knights fighting a losing war, two Shanghai-based monthly magazines  Shu Cheng (Book Town) and Wan Xiang (Panorama Monthly)  have only recently published their first editions this year after financial difficulties forced a six-month suspension.

When they temporarily stopped publication, the press wrote eulogies on China's last "intellectual magazines,"   tailored to the reading tastes of the cultural elite.
But their troubles are not recent. Since 2000, Book Town stopped pubishing thrice, reportedly because of money problems. Panorama Monthly kept running on a tight budget until it had a cash-flow crisis at the end of last year.

Now, as the two try to sell their new editions and Book Town redesigns its content and layout, the market seems fairly nonchalant.

"I don't think their sales can exceed their previous numbers (about 30,000 a monthl each)," said Xiong Hui, a bookshop manager.

For the time being, together with a couple of other titles published in Beijing, China's "intellectual magazines" seem to have little chance of overcoming financial challenges  and dwindling reader interest.

Is it because the market has switched to "lowbrow" reading material, or because the people  who used to read these magazines have all but disappeared despite growing numbers of university graduates?

The "intellectual magazines" had good readership among better-educated urban dwellers in the 1980s and early 1990s.

But since then, other types of media have flourished.

Zhu Wei, editor-in-chief of Sanlian Lifeweek  a current affairs magazine based in Beijing since 1995  said the magazine market has been taken over by a new breed of publications  upscale current affairs magazines.

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