China Literature
👤 Wu Wenhui (A web novelist, he co-founded Qidian in 2002 and pioneered pay-per-chapter reading, then ran it to a Tencent-backed 2017 IPO.)🌐 site
China invented pay-per-chapter web novels here, then turned the hits into films, anime and games.
Will it work? · our read
Owns the hits. A 20-year lead on China's pro web-novelists, and the rights to every hit they write. Reading revenue is flattening; the IP library is where the money now grows.
01How the money moves
Authors serialize novels; first chapters are free
→
Readers hit the VIP paywall mid-story
→
They pay per 1,000 characters to read on
02The numbers
$1.13BStatedFY24 group revenue (0772)
FY2024source:
RMB8,121.1M (US$1,129.7M), FY2024
Our read: near 1 in 10 readers pay, at RMB 32/mo (about $4.4). Reading revenue is flat now; IP licensing is the growth. FY24 results
Reading is about half; IP licensing (film, anime, games) is the other, faster half.
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You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
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See a full teardown, free → Transistor.fmSourcesSources last checked 30 July 2026
China Literature 2024 annual results (HKEX 0772) — group revenue, MAU/MPU, ARPU, segment splitYuewen Group corporate site — Qidian (est. 2002), WebNovel, IP ecosystemCNBC — China Literature's 2017 Hong Kong IPO; Tencent's 65% stakeGlobal Times — China's online-writing industry and the pay-per-chapter author economy
Revenue is China Literature Limited's STATED FY2024 group total, from its PRNewswire earnings release reporting the audited annual results (HKEX 0772) — a press release, not the filed annual report itself: RMB8,121.1M (US$1,129.7M). Qidian is the flagship reading platform inside the group; I did not isolate Qidian-only revenue. Online/reading revenue was RMB4,030.6M and IP operations and others RMB4,090.5M, up 33.5% (now the larger, faster-growing half). The IFRS net loss (RMB209.2M) is a one-off goodwill impairment on New Classics Media (RMB1,104.6M); non-IFRS profit was RMB1,141.7M. MAU, paying-user and ARPU tiles are from the same results release. Founder Wu Wenhui co-founded Qidian (2002), pioneered pay-per-chapter reading in 2003, ran it to the 2017 IPO (Tencent held 65.38%), and stepped down as co-CEO in April 2020. The competitive pressure from ByteDance's Tomato Novel is my read, not a company statement. We never score you.