Will China be able to kick its fast-food literature habit?

China will escape fast-food literature given enough time, says Chen Chenchen in Global Times

This is not the first time that China has been criticized for leaving the golden age of reading behind. In July, an article by Sharmistha Mohapatra, an Indian expat living in Shanghai, describing the clusters of Chinese passengers she witnessed playing iPad games on a flight from Shanghai to Frankfurt, after which she concluded that the Chinese habit of reading was in decline. This stirred up lots of discussion.

Last week, an Atlantic article titled “Why aren’t Chinese people reading books anymore?” said that “the country’s once-robust trade in serious literature has withered under an increasingly materialistic, results-oriented society,” and that while China boasts of having the largest publishing industry by number of works published, public enthusiasm has vanished.