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

Digital 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.