Awards alone don't get Chinese authors noticed

Since Yan Lianke won the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize earlier this month, Chinese media have been discussing the influence Chinese authors wield on the global arena. Some literary critics and business insiders, however, are urging people to see things in perspective.

As a group, Chinese authors' global influence is weak, although novelist Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2012, and Yan the Kafka award this year, according to Gao Xing, literary critic and editor-in-chief of World Literature, which is a Beijing-based bimonthly magazine and a pioneer in bringing foreign literature to China.

"Both are individual cases that can't represent a group," Gao told China Daily.