Alright :D As a web novel writer from China I think I can explain the situation a lil bit for ya.
First the whole "privileged chapters/episodes" model is already pretty common in Chinese video streaming platforms and some web novel platforms are also experimenting this, too, getting readers paying for "unlocking" the chapters then buy and read it. Its sole purpose is to squeeze money out of the users, to put it in the direct and ugly way, and the income doesn't increase much for authors directly, really, unless, potentially possibly, for future fixed-rate contracted writers because they are getting paid by words at the price settled in the contracts(e.g. 50 dollar per 1k words) and the increasing wealth of the website might lead to the increase in price for them(if the website wanted to), and for the same logic it could lead to the improvement in Minimum Guarantee System, too, IF WEBNOVEL WANTS TO.
I guess Webnovel is doing so out of their eagerness to explore and profit from the international market, because the domestic market isn't looking all good and friendly to them now. Yuewen Group--the company behind it--is the largest online publishing (I dunno if you guys have a proper name for this industry yet) group in China, indeed, but they probably see threats in the high competition they face in there(again, the business model of Webnovel has been developping in China for at least 15 years, it's really nothing new and because it's frigging lucrative lots of strong, new entrants are getting in the game), and the upcoming restrictions on webnovel contents resulted by governmental bans--just imagine, the whole "horror novel type" is going zip because newest policies don't allow writers to write about supernatural contents, I believe? And how great the loss it has caused for both authors and the website.
And also there's problem of user habits, too, for until this day, a quite large percentage of Chinese webnovel readers are still used to reading pirated novels and even feel rightious about it, and even if some writers try to fight for it, it's usually moot(:з)∠)the result of a general lack of legal education on IP protection in the entire society, whereas international readers are more used to...well at least "pay to read/watch", so they probably want to try take advantage of that and see to exactly what extent the price will be acceptible for you guys.
But they are just experimenting. If the market turns out to be rejecting it they will definitely cancel the thing. The whole "webnovel" thing is still new here, after all, there's plenty of room for changes and the price for changes is quite low, since Webnovel doesn't really have competitors in the international market yet ┑( ̄Д  ̄)┍ as far as I know, at least. They might be shitty at identifying good novels--especially for english readers--for they've been doing this too long in China but still new to you guys, so sometimes they might apply what they know about chinese readers to yous and it goes wrong, they are nevertheless good businessmen.
p.s. @RekiChan this kind of doing is really no secret among webnovel writers in China if you know about them XD we call this kind of act "watering", especially common for fix-rate contracted writers because they are frigging paid by words XDDDD