Digital Globalization, Fan Culture and Transmedia Storytelling: The Rise of Web Fiction as a Burgeoning Literary Genre in China

Abstract

ABSTRACTDigital globalization has established an interconnected virtual world, and profoundly transformed the landscape of literary practice. Anchored in the digital context, the development of new media technologies has exerted substantial influence on literature's context and mode of existence, giving rise to Internet literature, a new form of literary expression based on interactivity, hypertextuality and multimedia. Over the past two decades, the new media landscape opens up opportunities for the thriving development of Chinese web fiction, which is intrinsically a transmedia, fan-driven and – oriented text. With this in mind, this paper analyzes the rise of Chinese web fiction as a compelling cultural phenomenon, and argues that its operation model presents an exemplary alternative to how literature can benefit from new media technologies and reap the interests of digital globalization.KEYWORDS: Chinese web fictiondigital globalizationfan culturetransmedia storytellinginternet literature Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Miller first proposed this idea in a symposium titled “The Future of Literary Theory: China and the World” held in Beijing in 2000. He delivered a speech entitled “Will Literary Study Survive the Age of Globalization?” later translated into Chinese and published in Wenxue Pinglun (文学评论) [Literary Review, a top literary journal in China.2 This idea was first put forward at the Beijing Symposium in 2000, and later reproduced in various versions.3 A collection of J. Hillis Miller's essays was published in 2016, with the title being Literature Matters.4 It is widely accepted among Chinese academics that the year 1998 announced the symbolic commencement of Chinese Internet literature. Actually, Chinese Internet literature was cultivated outside China. During the early 1990s, writing on the web, as a literary practice, first appeared in the Chinese-language online forums established by overseas Chinese students based in North America. Ever since China's official connection to the Internet in 1994, the websites and bulletin boards devoted to literary writing and publishing developed rapidly.5 When talking about Chinese Internet Literature, this paper refers to web fiction.9 Yuewen Literature is also known as China Literature Corporation (the English name on its official website), which is the leading corporation that dominates the web fiction market today, under the wing of Chinese tech behemoth Tencent.6 Dragon Sky was the leader around 2003, but it adopted a business model of offline publishing, which later proved to be a failure.10 In 2015, Shengda Literature merged with Tencent Literature to form Yuewen Literature Corporation (阅文集团).11 It is now in partnership with Baidu, a Chinese tech behemoth.7 Source of statistics from Tencent Video, https://v.qq.com/x/cover/m441e3rjq9kwpsc.html, accessed September 6, 2022.8 This term, coined by French philosopher Pierre Lévy, is ideally applicable to literary creation online.12 The monthly ticket (Yuepiao, 月票) is a system of incitation in the literary websites, which allows VIP subscribers (fan-readers) to obtain a certain number of tickets (usually based on the points/coins they purchase) to vote for their favorite works. The ranking is based on the total number of monthly tickets received by a novel during a specific period (weekly/monthly and all-time).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by The National Social Science Fund of China: [Grant Number 23BWW016 ]; Major Program of the National Social Science Fund of China: [Grant Number 20&ZD140].Notes on contributorsYou WuWU You is Professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at East China Normal University. She received her BA in English Literature and Civilization from Nanjing University, China, MA, and Ph. D. in European Civilization and Society from Université Paris Diderot-Paris VII, France. She is the author of Un Siècle de Révolution (2013), “Globalization, Translation and Soft Power: A Chinese Perspective” (2017), “The Rise of China with Cultural Soft Power in the Age of Globalization” (2018), “China in the Looking Glass of the West: Transcultural Imagination and East-West Dialogue in François Jullien’s Chinese Study” (2020), “Globalization, Science Fiction and the China Story: Translation, Dissemination and Reception of Liu Cixin’s Works across the Globe” (2021), “Revisiting Translation in the Age of Digital Globalization: The ‘Going Global’ of Chinese Web Fiction through Overseas Volunteer Translation Websites” (2021) and many research articles in Chinese. Her research interest lies in the fields of comparative cultural studies and translation studies.