Pay as You Go
A Beijing resident reads with MintReading The worry of declining English language proficiency has been rattling in Liang Rui’s head since she graduated from the University of Huddersfield three years ago. Working at a private company in her hometown Taiyuan, capital of north China’s Shanxi Province, the 26-year-old woman had such a tight daily schedule that she could not spare time for her hobby of reading English classics.
Her situation has now improved thanks to a mobile reading app called MintReading. She now starts her day with a delicious breakfast and a browse on MintReading to enjoy some lines from her newly-purchased English e-book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, an exact reflection of her recent changeover.
“The app assigns a task of reading for 10 minutes a day and elaborates on the discourse so that readers can really learn something from reading. It’s convenient and efficient,” Liang told ChinAfrica. She paid 139 yuan ($22) for a 100-day reading program and is satisfied with her progress. “It helps utilize my fragmentary time, and I have finished two English original works even without noticing it,” she added.
Liang is one of the increasingly anxious Chinese people who are eager to continue studies so as to stand out amid a highly competitive country, but are too preoccupied with daily work and trivial matters. Many of them resort to various online courses, which are prolific thanks to current advanced technology, leading them, unconsciously, to become consumers of the fledging pay-for-knowledge industry.
A recent report by iiMedia Re search, a Chinese Internet investment analytics firm, revealed that the industry generated revenue of 4.91 billion yuan ($772 million) in 2016, a three-fold increase year on year. By 2020, the market value is expected to amount to 23.5 billion yuan ($3.7 billion). Insiders observed that the essence of the pay-for-knowledge industry is to dig into the commercial potential of knowledge and convert it into profitable products or services.
Seeing the value
The year of 2016 is dubbed an epoch year for the pay-for-knowledge industry. The Chinese equivalence of Quora Q&A, a site called Zhihu, mobile learning apps like iGet, and Ximalaya FM, an audio sharing platform, saw a surge in subscribers and product varieties in that year.