Why the Chinese Government should subsidize novel translations

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Is the OP trolling?
The WN is a fiercely competitive occupation in China,they don't need funds.Outside China it was too small.
The Chinese goverment is based on atheism and another social theory which can't be fully discribed or I might be censured as propaganda, but please count how many un-atheism "spirit X" and gods and immortals and ghosts and so on in WN.

Sounds like there is a Strategy Fool-You Agency constituted by "China experts" and conspiracy theories.

 

Man, this is some next level trolling/bullshit.

But on the off chance that OP is not, there's no point of it. The industry is perfectly fine as it is, having the government suddenly dump money into it isn't going to suddenly improve everything.

 

Just to go with the trolls here : I am a superstar is already ultra nationalistic, bigot as hell, heavily and clumsily censored, if the chinese governement go for taking control of web novel I can't imagine what monster it might become...

An insight like how intellectual property (even chinese's one) is glossed over everywhere in all chinese industries (in culture and science all the same) and how taking the credit (and a lot of money) for other people works while insulting anyone (especially strangers) can be a viable and easy way to stardom.

Nothing much to see here I'm just trolling by shooting a fish in a barrel ... .

 

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translate~ hmm then that's mean there need some censorship here and there and selection to put China as really good country~
I will laugh if china put IRAS kind of novel as their fore front~ sure try worsening your image more among country from same region~
at least they need to put something like Jewel in The Palace like what South Korea do for promote Korean culture back then

 

Huh. This actually makes sense. I'm not sure if I want all those specific examples subsidized, but there's a lot to be obtained by making your country's works popular. The Korean government did the same thing with K-pop:
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswi...he-south-korean-government-made-k-pop-a-thing
http://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/how-korea-became-the-worlds-coolest-brand

The Korean government has a US$ 1 billion investment fund to support Korean pop-culture.

And boy did that pay off. It's not about making propaganda of the government: nobody gives a shit about that. It's about making a country's whole cultural industry seem 'cool', and anybody who thinks that has no benefits should think about the influence of Hollywood, the Japan manga/anime industry and Korean pop-culture, because at the end of the day, more people care more about Gangnam-style than about South Korea's political policies.

 

Korea is only a cool brand for loveless delusional girls and creepy yellow fever fucks. It's the last place I'd want to go personally, at best it'd just be for some temporary 'fun' - which probably wouldn't be that fun -, but then I'd quickly leave and wipe myself with sanitisers on the way out and probably feel slightly disgusted with myself. Same way I feel when I read thier erotic manwha tbh.

China should have more self-respect than to go down that path, even though I don't doubt as money takes over their culture will be as annoying as US & KR culture combined sooner or later.

Honestly though, I'd say novels are a bit too high on the intelligence requiring scale to do that much work, even though it'd be a nice step - the CIA is behind a lot of hollywood decision making for example, weaponised culture is a thing.

Better to invest in modernising dramas, movies, animations and such things - as it's more digestable for the common peeps. Although I don't watch anything akin to them personally since those media are dumbed down too much usually.

A lot of the Chinese manwha(?)/hua(?) I've encountered have been pretty good as well.

Still with a huge budget going on kinda stupid things as the OP was saying, it'd be nice to allocate some of that to improve global distribution of their novels as there's a decent amount of quality content.

 

• Gangnam Style is Youtube's #1 most watched clip.
• K-pop put South Korea on the map for a lot of people. This means when they think about whether to go to Sri Lanka or South Korea, they are more likely to go to South Korea.
• You may not care much since you're probably in a Western country, but South Korea is huge in -China-. K-pop is popular there. K-dramas are popular there. Korean products in general are popular there. They're making a lot off their bigger neighbour.

Also, I wasn't clear, but I meant subsidizing new cultural works in general, not just webnovels. I gave the example of K-pop for South Korea, but it's also pushing other things. -Old- Chinese culture has a good reputation overseas, but the only 'newer' stuff that seems to get much attention is whatever gets banned by the Chinese government, or some really high-end niche products. There isn't a 'wave' of cultural influence like Japan and South Korea have created. Heck, even India has Bollywood.

A main issue with the Chinese government is that it tries to control things waaaay too much. With the amount of censorship there is, there is a big reluctance to innovate, 'just in case' it steps on the toes of the censors ([insert rant about the state of TV dramas in China, of which 1/3 are historical/wuxias, 1/3 are modern dramas of which many are ripping off foreign dramas, and 1/3 are about the brave communists fending off the 'evil Japanese'] - there's no diversity at all).

 

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The Chinese government doesn't care about the rest of the world.

 

It might already be happening.

http://www.sixthtone.com/news/chinese-online-novels-find-foreign-fans

(Emphasis mine)

Wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese government is involved in the background, at least to a minor degree.

 

Yes, soft power is important. Indeed, the problem with the Chinese government is that it Does try to insert propaganda into everything. Its idea of 'spreading Chinese culture' is CCTV News and Confucian Institutes. It thinks it can control what 'culture' is being spread. The result is that nobody cares. Worse, the Chinese government is always ready to censor stuff, banning entire genres at a time (it banned time travel in TV series and even banned a highly successful singing contest, can you believe how stupid that is? That singing contest was quite harmless by the way).

The right approach, as what happened in Japan and South Korea, is to Not meddle and let the market figure out itself what it wants, and at most support whatever is popular, even if it ends up being something like C-Pop or webnovels. The basic point is that it shouldn't be for the government to decide. What's more, letting things grow from the grounds up has long-term benefits: it may be a whole bunch of crap at first, but the industry learns and gems may start to appear, stuff that adds to the long-term cultural richness of the country instead of just eating the dividends off works made centuries ago. What history tells us is that what constitutes 'crap pop culture' now may be viewed differently centuries down the line: the Waltz was invented by the populace, so was Chinese opera.

 

The reason for TL community keeping a distance with the goverment (especially China).

The boudary between soft power and propaganda is misty. Because all the entertainment products have positive effects on the audience, make them interested in a certain country.That's fine for developing soft power, but as well could be supposed to be a primary propaganda.
Which one is true? The answer totally depends on reviewer's subjective judgement. Funding by other goverment, rapidly increased the suspension of propaganda.
A little propaganda doesn't matter,you might see advertisements from Chinese goverment on newspaper, TV sets,even in the live show of presidential debate.But learn from the close up of many Confucius Institutes(the one in the Pennsylvania State University,and some in Canada,ect), you can get a terrible conclusion: THE SUSPENSION OF PROPAGANDA DOES MATTER.
Maybe it is hard to accept, but the freedom of speech should give a way sometimes. The stealth limitation will not be awared until the social media push tons of trash video you never searched, zips your account and disappears your upload contents.
So, please don't give them excuse to harm the community.
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The reason for Chinese goverment just standing aside.(This is only my speculation.)

1.The community was too small, how many people? Please don't bother me if you are less than 1 million readers.Films have much more influnce, let's make another Kung Fu Panda with Holywood.
2.Which one should get the fund, how to control the outlays? Will it lead to unfair competition? How to avoid the failure of Confucius Institute?
3.The market rule works well in the market,government involvement harms the market.
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I would say no. Based on the fact that China is adapting to the world and that in the last 15 years there is more and more laws governing the country. Including laws that concern copyright. What the chinese government have done is quite something. They sent student all over the World to study different law system and import what they considered to be the best from the Rest of the World. Subsidizing translators would be infringement of the original author work. If they want to protect the work of their own author they would not do such a thing. China greatnest doesn't rely soly on the exposure of the chinese culture to the rest of the world but also on adapting to the best they can get elsewhere. Society progress on different rythms and it's alright like that. I am convince that 20 years from now Chinese kid would not believe how it is right now in their country. China's evolution is already on steroid, it will be very interesting for those who follow such a thing