The Cao Wenxuan Children's Literature Prize, a book contest named after Hans Christian Andersen Award winner Cao Wenxuan, was launched at a press conference held at Peking University (PKU) in Beijing on April 20.

The event, organized by Jiangsu province-based Phoenix Publishing and Media Group, the Jiangsu Writers' Association and PKU's Chinese department, is aimed at stimulating writers' passion, promoting original Chinese children's literature to go global, and becoming a prestigious cultural platform for fiction writing, publishing, translation and publicity.

More than 300 people took part in the press conference, including China Writers Association Vice-President Gao Hongbo, the vice-chief of the CPC Jiangsu Committee's publicity department, and PPMG Chairman Zhang Jiankang.

Cao Wenxuan gave a speech at the conference and expressed his hope that the prize can give birth to more high-quality children's books and help children's literature flourish.

Cao Wenxuan gives a speech at the press conference at Peking University on April 20.

The organizers also announced the solicitation for works from both adult and young authors for this year's event. The submission period is from April 20 to Oct 20, 2017.

The awards for adult writers require full-length novels no less than 60,000 Chinese characters in length, either submitted by the author or recommended by Jiangsu literature institutions. Writers should be born before April 20, 1999 (above 18 years old).

Submissions for the young writers awards must be short stories of less than 10,000 Chinese characters in length and should be recommended by primary and secondary schools in Jiangsu. Writers should be born after April 20, 1999 (18 years old or below).

Winners of the first prize in the adult and young writer awards will receive 300,000 yuan ($43,600) and 30,000 yuan respectively.