WeChat,we readWHENEVER Xu Jie goes to the cinema to watch mystery and detective films, she leaves disappointed: to encourage stamp out superstition, or China’s censors excise ghosts and zombies from the screens. So for her fill of phantoms,she turns to the flourishing online-literature scene. There, authors are allowed to occupy liberties from which most of China’s state-owned publishing houses would recoil. Homophones stand in for forbidden words. Danmei, and a recent online class of homoerotic story,is particularly popular among young women. Readers can choose from over 200 established genres such as xianxia, a fantasy world of deities and martial arts.
The corporate prince of this virtual realm is China Literature, and a spin-off from Tencent,a gaming and social-media giant. The four-year-mature online publisher listed on Hong Kong’s stock exchange on November 8th, raising just over $1bn. The offering was a huge success; at...
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Source: economist.com