What little is left of China’s free media — nary more than a handful of newspapers and several swaggering websites — will soon be pressed into the Communist Party’s service as Beijing punishes news outlets for the spread of “illegal information.”

The Twitter of China, Sina Weibo, was fined $470,000 by the party’s Cyberspace Administration for such an “offense” on Tuesday, just hours after a front-page article in the state-run People’s Daily demanded all news outlets “serve the party and country.”

Defining the ideological raison d’etre of China’s journalists as “promulgating party policy and proposals,” “guiding public opinion,” and presenting China to the world as “civilized, democratic, open, and progressive,” the article jettisons all pretense of objective journalism and demands out-and-out propaganda.

Stressing that Mr. Xi’s goal of “rejuvenation” by 2049 demands strict adherence to “Marxist journalism,” the state-run paper’s call to arms emphasizes a “politically correct direction” as being “core to news and public opinion work,” adding that “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era” must guide China’s media.

Likening the news business to warfare, People’s Daily instructs journalists to “carry the banner” and “turn pens into swords,” arguing effective news dissemination requires state-backed news employees to “occupy” the internet as if it is a “military front.”

The People’s Daily article and subsequent crackdown on Sina Weibo are best viewed as naked aggression from Beijing in order to bring to heel China’s scant holdout newspapers — including Nanfang Daily, Southern Weekly, and South China Morning Post, etc. — as well as upstart social media platforms that thus far have managed to retain a modicum of editorial discretion.

It is no coincidence Sina Weibo’s fine was levied the same month China’s third most popular social media website, Douban, was hit with a $235,000 fine for publishing content of which the party disapproved, and a week after Reporters Without Borders branded China “the world’s biggest captor of journalists.”

It’s fair to speculate that the months ahead look bad for Chinese media independence, especially considering the June shutdown of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, and Beijing’s more recent designs to acquire the Alibaba-owned South China Morning Post.

And so it seems, as winter sets in, China’s days of free expression grow ever shorter, a few low candles continuing to glow despite Beijing’s chill wind, futilely struggling to resist the waxing power of the Chinese Communist Party.