All the Literature That's Fit to Print: A Print Culture Perspective on Modern Chinese Literature

The rise of modern Chinese literature has been closely intertwined with the evolution of the print media. The rise of new platforms for the publication and dissemination of literary works has not just altered the economics of literary consumption, but had direct impact also on the aesthetic, formal, and social dimensions of literary production in modern China. This chapter traces the role of print culture in the making of modern Chinese literature from the late Qing through the 1920s-30s, the socialist period and the reform era, to the present, focusing especially on two problems: the rise of new media, and the emergence of new sites of interaction and participation in the processes of literary production and circulation.