A visitor experiences 5G reading through virtual reality at the fifth China Digital Reading Conference 2019 in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, on April 12. [Photo/Xinhua]

According to the paper, e-reading is growing in popularity in China with about 432 million Chinese people having read digital publications on electronic devices in 2018. An average of 12.4 digital publications were read per person.

The value of China's digital reading market reached 25.5 billion yuan ($3.8 billion) last year, up 19.6 percent year on year, said the report.

In terms of genre, fiction, success literature and books in social sciences and the humanities were the most popular among people aged between 25 and 30, while novels and campus literature were favored by those aged between 14 and 18.

The top 10 digital works and projects of 2018 as well as the 10 cities with the highest number of digital readers and highest number of reading activities in the last year were also revealed during the conference.

This year's event was co-hosted by the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, publicity departments of Hangzhou and Zhejiang province.