China's most popular literature website will introduce a rating system to set an industry norm, with the country's online novels seeing expanding influence at home and abroad and ever-younger readers joining the trend. Photo: Courtesy of Raz Mey

China's most popular literature website will introduce a rating system to set an industry norm, with the country's online novels seeing expanding influence at home and abroad and ever-younger readers joining the trend. 

In an announcement on October 21, Jinjiang Literature City said that "it will gradually build a reading recommendation system for different ages according to different types of works."

It will also ensure that novels "with controversial, sharp, and more complex ideological content" are only read by "mature readers."

The announcement is believed to be a response to recent punishments for content violations. Jinjiang, a website that publishes Chinese-language online novels, has average daily page views exceeding 100 million. It was punished three times for showing illegal content from 2018 to 2019.

The website is the first in the country to promise a rating system for web novels, and insiders say this will be a good move to set a norm for development of the country's web novels, given that the industry now has more influence on a bigger range of younger readers.

Web novels have become an important aspect of cultural products going overseas. "We're surprised to notice that every year the Chinese web novels are gaining more and more popularity in other countries, especially countries in Southeast Asia," an expert on Chinese web novels' overseas marketing told the Global Times on Tuesday. "It's an expanding market now and it's necessary to build an industry reviewing system for web novels."

By 2020, more than 10,000 Chinese web novels had been translated into other languages, based on a report released by the Chinese Writers Association in June.

Web novels are now drawing younger readers. A 2019 report by the Chinese Writers Association said that among the 455 million internet readers, more than 70 percent were born in the 1990s.

A senior web novelist told the Global Times that the announcement from Jinjiang is still "only a notice released by the website," but as one of the most popular novel websites, "it has a wish to take the lead in regulating the industry." 

The novelist told the Global Times that generally "a novel chapter with thousands of words only needs 24 hours to be reviewed," adding that restricted themes include politics, pornography and ghosts.

"Some sensitive words will also be blocked. For example, you can write the word 'kissing' in a novel but don't use 'French kiss.'"