Beijing Century Chaoxing Information Technology Development Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 北京世纪超星信息技术发展有限责任公司; pinyin: Běijīng Shìjì Chāoxīng Xìnxī Jìshù Fāzhǎn Yǒuxiàn Zérèn Gōngsī), commonly known as Chaoxing (Chinese: 超星; pinyin: Chāoxīng) or SuperStar, is a Chinese technology company headquartered in Haidian District, Beijing, that operates digital library and educational technology services. Its principal products are the SuperStar Digital Library, the DuXiu academic search engine, and the Xuexitong learning management system. Over its history the company has been the subject of significant copyright litigation brought by Chinese scholars and publishers, as well as a major data security controversy involving the alleged exposure of over 170 million user records.

Chaoxing was established in 1993 in Beijing as a private enterprise providing document digitisation services to government agencies and academic institutions, using its proprietary PDG file format.^[1] In 1996 the company expanded into electronic publishing, producing over 200 CD-ROM products including historical periodicals and archival materials.^[1] By the end of 1997 it had developed a web-based e-book publishing system.^[1]

In 1998 the National Library of China contracted Chaoxing to convert 200,000 paper books into digital format as part of the government's National Digital Library project, a contract worth approximately one million yuan.^[1] The company retained copies of all 200,000 digitised titles, which formed the foundational collection of its later digital library service.^[1] The SuperStar Digital Library was officially launched on the internet in January 2000 and was designated a demonstration project under China's National High-Tech R&D Program (863 Program).^[2]

Following the launch, Chaoxing continued to expand its collection by digitising further paper books and establishing subscription relationships with universities across China.^[1] The company subsequently developed the DuXiu academic search engine as a full-text search layer over the core book collection. Several North American university libraries came to describe it as the "Chinese Google Scholar".^[3] According to Johns Hopkins University Libraries, the DuXiu collection covers "nearly all the books published in mainland China both before and after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949", making it the largest digital library of Chinese books in the world.^[4]

In 2007, Chaoxing became the subject of a widely reported series of copyright infringement lawsuits brought by Chinese scholars whose works had been included in the SuperStar Digital Library without what they claimed was proper authorisation.^[5] Six related cases were heard concurrently by the Haidian District People's Court. The cases were led by scholar Wu Rui, who alleged alongside fellow plaintiff Liu Baocai that Chaoxing and Beijing Institute of Technology had made their academic work Wenshi Yinghua: Zhuzijuan available for paid download without authorisation.^[5]

The central dispute in Wu Rui's case concerned whether an authorisation letter bearing his signature had been forged. Chaoxing commissioned the Beijing Zhongtian Forensic Identification Centre to conduct handwriting analysis, which concluded that the signature was authentic.^[5] The court ruled the procedure procedurally invalid and ordered a second examination by the Beijing Huaxia Physical Evidence Identification Centre. The second examiner found that while there were many matching characteristics between the samples, the quantity of pre-litigation signature samples was insufficient to reach a definitive conclusion.^[5] Based on the available evidence, the court found in Chaoxing's favour on Wu Rui's case, ruling that the signature on the authorisation letter was his own.^[5]

The five remaining cases were decided against Chaoxing. Professor Jiang Guanghui of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who sued over three academic books including Yan Li Xuepai, received the highest individual award of 36,000 yuan. The other four successful plaintiffs received between 4,000 and just over 10,000 yuan each.^[5] The scholars considered the damages inadequate. Plaintiff lawyer Wu Zonghong noted that after legal fees and notarisation costs, most awards left little or no net compensation, and all successful plaintiffs appealed to the Beijing First Intermediate Court seeking both higher damages and a public apology from the company.^[5]

In response, Chaoxing's public relations manager stated that the company's victory in Wu Rui's case demonstrated the validity of its direct authorisation model, and that the defeats in the other five cases resulted from having obtained authorisation from publishers rather than directly from individual authors. The company indicated it would pursue individual author authorisations going forward and described the existing damages as a reasonable figure.^[5] At the time of the verdict, four further related cases remained at the evidence exchange stage, and the plaintiffs' lawyer had filed additional cases in Shandong province alleging that Shandong Institute of Sport had infringed certain scholars' works through the SuperStar Digital Library.^[5]

The litigation attracted wide coverage in China as a significant early test of copyright enforcement against commercial digital libraries. Zhonghua Dushu Bao, a major Chinese literary newspaper, investigated the case and questioned whether characterising the matter as the country's "biggest network piracy case" was accurate.^[6]

Subsequent years saw further series of copyright cases involving Chaoxing and its associated entity Beijing Century Duxiu Technology Co., Ltd. Academic publishers brought actions relating to the inter-library document delivery service operated by Chaoxing, through which users could request scanned pages from books by email. Courts issued numerous civil judgments across multiple case series involving libraries including Shenzhen Library, Shenzhen University Library, Suzhou Library, and Mianyang Public Library, with Peking University Press among the plaintiffs.^[7] The cases drew attention to the legal risks faced by libraries subscribing to commercial digital platforms and the liability exposure of both the platforms and their institutional clients.^[7]

The SuperStar Digital Library and DuXiu database together constitute one of the largest collections of Chinese-language academic content in the world. The University of Wisconsin-Madison describes the collection as covering books, journal articles, newspapers, graduate theses, conference proceedings, and video materials, with full-text access to over two million core Chinese monographs and journals, as well as over 500 yearbooks published in mainland China.^[8] The platform allows users to view the first several pages of most titles and to request up to 50 pages or 20 percent of a book per week via email document delivery.^[9]

Chaoxing operates ChinaMaxx, an internationally facing version of the collection, which is subscribed to by academic libraries at institutions including Princeton University, the University of Washington, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.^[10][8]

In late 2023, the shadow library Anna's Archive announced that a volunteer had provided it with approximately 7.5 million scanned books from the DuXiu database, totalling around 350 terabytes.^[11] Anna's Archive described the collection as the largest Chinese non-fiction book collection outside China and larger than the non-fiction holdings of Library Genesis, saying the volunteer had compiled it at great personal expense over several months.^[11]

Anna's Archive offered exclusive early access to AI companies in exchange for OCR processing of the scanned files. The organisation noted that the books had long circulated informally on the Chinese internet, typically sold by resellers for under one yuan each via Chinese cloud storage services.^[11] The announcement drew significant discussion in the international technology community as a notable development in the availability of large-scale Chinese academic content outside China.^[12]

Chaoxing operates Xuexitong (Chinese: 学习通; pinyin: Xuéxítōng), a mobile learning management system used widely across Chinese universities for course delivery, attendance tracking, and online examinations.^[13] According to the company's own marketing material, Xuexitong had more than 40 million users and was described as "the most frequently used app by universities for online teaching during the 2020 Covid outbreak".^[13] Academic research confirmed its widespread adoption, with studies documenting its use across dozens of Chinese institutions during the pandemic period for live teaching, assignment submission, and student behaviour monitoring.^[14]

In June 2022, reports emerged in Chinese media that more than 170 million Xuexitong user records, including student names, university affiliations, telephone numbers, email addresses, and passwords, had allegedly been placed for sale on the dark web.^[15] Southern Metropolis Daily reported that cybersecurity experts warned that despite the company's use of one-way password encryption, the combination of real names, institutional affiliations, and contact details left users substantially exposed.^[16]

In a public statement Chaoxing said it had checked its systems and found "no clear and solid evidence of data breach", while confirming it had reported the matter to police for investigation.^[13] Times Higher Education reported the incident as highlighting concerns about data security practices at Chinese universities when relying on third-party educational technology vendors, quoting legal experts on the inadequacy of institutional cybersecurity awareness.^[13] The dataset was reported to have resurfaced on dark web forums in March 2026, with security analysts noting that mobile numbers tied to real-name registration in China retain value long after an initial breach.^[17]

• Anna's Archive
• Library Genesis
• Sci-Hub
• Shadow library
• Digital library
• China National Knowledge Infrastructure
• 863 Program

• SuperStar Digital Library
• DuXiu Academic Search