China Literature shuffles personnel, looking to the future

China Literature, the country's top online literature site, announced on Monday a leadership reshuffle as the company plans to focus on better commercializing literary content, combining technologies and other business modes under the umbrella of its parent Tencent.

Edward Cheng, Tencent's vice-president and head of Tencent Pictures, will serve as CEO of China Literature after incumbent Wu Wenhui and other key managerial staff resigned their posts.

In a statement, the company touted Wu's ground-breaking role in creating Qidian, a prototype he helped grow into today's digital literary standard following a string of acquisitions, and believed his contributions to company milestones such as its initial public offering have laid a solid foundation for further development in the so-called 'Neo-Culture Creativity Era'.

This is a concept put forward by Tencent in 2018 as the guiding principle to maximize synergy between the entertainment sector and its other business units.

The statement said the call for deepened integration of web-based literature and other entertainment forms like TV series, comics and gaming has become more pressing. Wu has chosen to step aside amid the transition, giving leeway to better promote the company's business, technological, intellectual property and ecological construction that accords with more future-facing business roles.

Joining Tencent in 2009, Cheng currently oversees the company's movie and TV series production and investment arm and is an advocate of promoting cultural and industrial value of content through a centralized connection of channels and digital means.

With five years of development, China Literature has 8.1 million content curators, 12.2 million literary works and hundreds of millions of users.