Convert C char to UTF-16 for transmission over network

Convert C char to UTF-16 for transmission over network

I'm writing a program that will interface with another machine running
Java, and I need to send character arrays over the network. On the
receiving end, the Java program uses DataInputStream's readChar() function
and expects characters. However, since characters are stored as 1 byte in
C, I'm having some trouble writing to the network.
How would I go about converting this?
The actual protocol specification is like so:
short: Contains length of char array
char 1, 2, 3...: The characters in the array
For background information, my short conversion is like so:
char *GetBytesShort(short data)
{
short net_data = NET_htons(data);
char *ptr = (char *) malloc(sizeof(short));
memcpy(ptr, &net_data, sizeof(short));
return ptr;
}
I've tested it on the receiving end in Java, and the short does get sent
over correctly with the correct length, but the character array does not.
Thanks in advance!