{"id":9572,"date":"2022-02-28T07:30:44","date_gmt":"2022-02-28T07:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=9572"},"modified":"2025-05-08T09:43:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T09:43:53","slug":"why-what-china-is-reading-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/why-what-china-is-reading-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why what China is reading matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

From xianxia <\/em>(alternate reality) to danmei <\/em>(boys love) novels, a<\/em>\u00a0new book on reading in China reveals just how different Chinese readers are from their Western counterparts. Paul French<\/strong> caught up with author Megan Walsh to find out more<\/h2>\n

Knowing what China is reading is useful for anyone trying to better understand the Chinese consumer and Chinese society. It\u2019s a great addition to our knowledge of trends, tastes, consumption and, of course, the limits of what can be said and read. Knowing what a society is reading shows us its obsessions, fascinations and regional and demographic differences. In The Subplot: What China is Reading and Why it Matters<\/i> (Columbia Global Reports), Megan Walsh has done an incredible job pulling together all the strands of what China is reading right now \u2014 which authors, genres and styles, as well as how<\/em> they are reading (online, e-books, hard copy). It\u2019s a surprising and revealing book showing that Chinese readers are very different from their Western counterparts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Megan studied Chinese literature and film at SOAS in London and regularly writes about and reviews Chinese fiction for many major newspapers and journals. Paul French caught up with Walsh to talk about Chinese fiction tastes and trends.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s so much to talk about in this book, but I\u2019d like to focus on Chapter 3 which you title \u2018The Factory: The Business of Online Escapism.\u2019 I think the Chinese online literature market is fascinating because we don\u2019t really have any equivalent in Britain and it\u2019s about what stories compel readers so much that they are paying to read new chapters all the time. Can you give us a brief overview of China\u2019s online reading platforms, the size and scope of what they\u2019re publishing and how many people use them?<\/h4>\n

Chinese online fiction is, in short, the largest, self-generating industry of unregulated, free-market fiction in the world, and the quality is usually pretty poor. Still, it boasts impressive statistics. There are an estimated 450 million active readers and 17 million authors vying to catch and keep \u201ceyeballs.\u201d Most platforms, including Hongxiu, Jinjiang Literature City (Jjwxc), Qidian and China Literature operate a pay-per-chapter system, which has created a culture of serialisation. It has nurtured a rather dog-eat-dog approach to writing, with writers often plagiarising other people\u2019s work and deploying sloppy clickbait tactics in order to keep updating and keep people reading. Novels are cancelled if they don\u2019t attract enough visits, while the most popular romance and fantasy titles might be snapped up for highly coveted and extremely lucrative TV, anime or gaming adaptations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n