Michel Hockx is Professor of Chinese at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and Founding Director of the SOAS China Institute. He has published widely on the social, political and technological context of literary production and publishing in China, including Internet Literature in China (2015), Questions of Style: Literary Societies and Literary Journals in Modern China (2003), and A Snowy Morning: Eight Chinese Poets on the Road to Modernity (1994). Hockx received his Ph.D. from Leiden University, and has studied at Liaoning and Beijing Universities.
China’s Internet remains something of a walled garden, isolated from the rest of the world by the Great Firewall and by language barriers. There are many downsides to this isolation, but it also creates opportunities for China’s Internet to develop in unique and innovative ways. Tonight’s speaker will draw upon his recently published book Internet Literature in China to discuss the startling array of creativity to be found on the Chinese Internet. He will show how online writing not only breaks through existing literary norms, but also how it challenges the conventional state-run system of publishing, opening up new opportunities for China’s creative economy.
