Avoiding Censors, Chinese Authors Go Online
By Jessie Jiang and Simon Elegant / Beijing writing in Time magazine.

Monday, Mar. 16, 2009

The number of China's Internet users reached 137 million at the end of last year
China Photos / Getty Images

Anyone trying to learn how to dig up ancient artifacts by watching the Tomb Raider movies would find little practical help from Angelina Jolie traipsing around Cambodia's temples. If you're an online-literature buff in China, you might have better luck.

Last spring, an unemployed 45-year-old man and his seven accomplices were arrested by police after having successfully dug up artifacts from a 15th century tomb just outside Beijing. Their techniques, as the police soon found out, were an exact imitation of those described in Ghost Blows Out the Light, a hugely popular Chinese online novel that was first published on the Web in December 2005 and has since been read by millions.
Behind the wild success of Ghost Blows Out the Light is a booming internet-novel industry that is largely unique to China because of the greater freedom from censorship enjoyed online by writers and readers.

Shanda Literature, which controls over 90% of China's online-reading market, rakes in an estimated revenue of 100 million yuan ($15 million) per year. Running three popular online-novel websites, Shanda boasts a total readership of 25 million and is growing at 10 million per year, according the company. "The Chinese people need a platform to express their creativity," said Hou Xiaoqiang, founding CEO of Shanda Literature. "I think our online-literature sites can partly cater to that need."

Read the full fascinating piece at Time online.