China's digital publications earn 572b yuan in 2016

BEIJING — The revenue of China's digital publication industry reached 572 billion yuan ($84 billion) in 2016, according to a report by a research institute Tuesday.

The number was 29.9 percent up from 2015, mainly pushed by revenue from online advertisements, which raked in over 290 billion yuan last year, accounting for 50.7 percent of the total revenue.

Other sources of the revenue include mobile publications and online games, as they earned more than 139 billion and 82 billion yuan respectively last year, the report said.

The report also showed 1.67 billion people used digital publications in 2016, 566 million of whom were online game players.

Online literature has kept its momentum despite the drop in the digital versions of traditional magazines and newspapers, as the proportion of original works rose from 69 percent to 79.7 percent in 2016.