An informal group of Chinese volunteers is working to build an online encyclopedia called Chinese Wikipedia to create a free source of information for Chinese Internet users.

Chinese Wikipedia is a Chinese-language offshoot of Wikipedia, an online English-language encyclopedia that is also available in a host of other languages.

This project started in early 2001 and now has more than 6,000 active contributors working on 600,000 entries in 50 languages, while the English version offers more than 260,000 entries.

Wiki format allows any visitor to the Chinese Wikipedia Web site, to modify any of the pages in the encyclopedia by adding, changing, or deleting information, while restores the original page if it is destroyed or defaced maliciously by visitors.

(CRI June 1, 2004)