MANILA, Philippines – China is creating a state-sponsored equivalent to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the South China Morning Post reported late Sunday, April 30.

Called the Chinese Encyclopedia, the internet version of the nation’s encyclopedia has 20,000 authors, scholars, and researchers, working on article contributions in over 100 disciplines, with the goal to have over 300,000 entries of around 1,000 words each.

Comparatively, this would make it twice as large as the Encyclopedia Britannica and would be of a similar size to China’s Wikipedia.

The Chinese Encyclopedia is slated to come out in 2018.

Yang Muzhi, editor in chief of the project as well as chairman of the Book and Periodicals Distribution Association of China, called the Chinese Encyclopedia “not a book, but a great wall of culture.” 

Yang added China felt an urgent need to build its own encyclopedia to “guide and lead the public and society.”

The Chinese government has been blocking or otherwise denying access to specific pages on the Chinese edition of Wikipedia, and while Chinese companies do have online encyclopedias, the depth and breadth of information is not as large. The move to make its own authoritative source of information seems like the next big thing in controlling the flow of information.

No indication has been given as to whether the Chinese Encyclopedia will be available outside of China or in foreign languages. – Rappler.com