The report also showed the rate of reading printed books in China was 58.0 percent in 2014, up 0.2 percentage points compared with 2013.

On average, Chinese people read 4.56 books and 65.03 newspapers, a decline of 0.21 and 5.82 on the previous year. However, last year the average reading time for books grew to 18.76 minutes, 5.33 minutes longer than 2013.

Some 57.2 percent of Chinese adults still prefer printed books, 23.5 percent choose mobile reading and 14.3 percent favor online reading. For those who at least tried digital reading, 8 percent bought a printed book after reading the same E-book, up by 0.9 percentage points.