The Chinese Wikipedia () is the written vernacular Chinese edition of Wikipedia. It was created on 11 May 2001. It is one of multiple projects supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.
The Chinese Wikipedia has been blocked in mainland China since May 2015. Nonetheless, the Chinese Wikipedia is still one of the top ten most active versions of Wikipedia by number of edits and number of editors, due to contributions from users from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Chinese diaspora. Readers from Taiwan and Hong Kong contribute most of the page views of the Chinese Wikipedia.
Despite being censored in mainland China, and as VPNs are normally not allowed to edit Wikipedia, Wikipedia administrators from China have permitted IP block exemption for a select number of mainland users. Such users are recruited to change the editorial content on Wikipedia in support of China's viewpoint and/or to support the election of pro-Chinese government administrators on Wikipedia, with the aim of gaining control of Wikipedia as part of the Chinese Communist Party's coordinated efforts to push their preferred narrative on platforms that have respected worldwide credibility. There has also been an exodus of volunteer editors leaving Baidu Baike, a domestic competitor beset by problems of self-censorship and commercialization, to join Chinese Wikipedia because the "contributors wanted the privilege of working on a higher-quality internet encyclopedia" that also "carries a great deal of international power". Observers have suggested that such moves are not just due to patriotic mainlanders but a "larger structural coordinated strategy the government has to manipulate these platforms" beside Wikipedia, such as Twitter and Facebook.
The resulting pro-Beijing Wikipedia community, the Wikimedians of Mainland China (WMC), has clashed with Wikipedia editors from Taiwan and Hong Kong, not only over content disputes on Wikipedia articles, but also made death threats against their Wikimedian communities. In particular, the WMC has threatened to report Wikipedia editors to Hong Kong's national security police hotline over the disputed article "2019–2020 Hong Kong protests" characterized by edit warring. The Foundation's investigation also found that "infiltrators had tried to promote "the aims of China, as interpreted through whatever filters they may bring to bear" and that the WMC had been involved in vote-stacking and manipulation of administrative elections.
Due to such threats to volunteer safety, as well as the manipulation of administrative elections by Mainland editors, Wikimedia revoked access of seven editors and downgraded the privileges of 12 Mainland-based administrators on 16 September 2021 over "infiltration concerns." The affair caused significant controversy on Chinese Wikipedia, and also drew critical commentary from Chinese media, where Wikipedia is rarely discussed.
Statistics Chinese Wikipedia has articles (the twelfth-largest Wikipedia), registered users, and active editors, of whom have administrative privileges. In 2016 Chinese Wikipedia had 4.9 billion page views, and in 2026, Chinese Wikipedia ranked eighth in all-time page views.
History
The first article was created on 1 November 2002 by user Ghyll.
In order to accommodate the orthographic differences between simplified Chinese characters and traditional Chinese characters (or orthodox Chinese), from 2002 to 2003, the Chinese Wikipedia community gradually decided to combine the two originally separate versions of the Chinese Wikipedia. The first running automatic conversion between the two orthographic representations started on 23 December 2004, with the MediaWiki 1.4 release. The needs from Hong Kong and Singapore were taken into account in the MediaWiki 1.4.2 release, which made the conversion table for zh-sg default to zh-cn, and zh-hk default to zh-tw.
In its early days, most articles on the Chinese Wikipedia were translated from the English version. The first five sysops, or administrators, were promoted on 14 June 2003.
Wikipedia was first introduced by the mainland Chinese media in the newspaper China Computer Education on 20 October 2003, in the article, "I'll write an encyclopedia too" ()."我也来写百科全书." (Archive). ccidnet.com.
On 16 May 2004, Wikipedia was first reported by Taiwanese media in the newspaper China Times. Since then, many newspapers have published articles about the Chinese Wikipedia, and several sysops have been interviewed by journalists.
Ivan Zhai of the South China Morning Post wrote that the blocks from the mainland authorities in the 2000s stifled the growth of the Chinese Wikipedia, and that by 2013 there was a new generation of users originating from the Mainland who were taking efforts to make the Chinese Wikipedia grow. In 2024, there were 3.6 million registered users on the Chinese Wikipedia, and in July 2013 7,500 of these users were active, with most of them originating from Hong Kong and Taiwan.Zhai, Ivan (5 August 2013). "Wiki reboot: Chinese Wikipedia makes comeback after early censorship ." South China Morning Post. Retrieved on 9 March 2014.
Naming
The Chinese name of Wikipedia was decided on 21 October 2003, following a vote.:zh:维基百科:Wikipedia的中文名. Chinese Wikipedia.
The name () means "Wiki Encyclopedia". The Chinese transcription of "Wiki" is composed of two characters: , whose ancient sense refers to 'ropes or webs connecting objects', and alludes to the 'Internet'; and , meaning the 'foundations of a building', or 'fundamental aspects of things in general'. The name can be interpreted as 'the encyclopedia that connects the fundamental knowledge of humanity'.
The most common Chinese translation for wiki technology is ; however, it can be (literally "dimension visitor" or similar) or (literally "circle/enclose period/record" or similar), which are also transcriptions of the word "wiki". As a result, the term has become associated exclusively with Wikimedia projects.
The Chinese Wikipedia has a subtitle: "", which means, "The ocean is vast because it admits all rivers." This was written by Qing official Lin Zexu, and the full sentence is "".
Community
According to Wikimedia Statistics, in January 2021, the majority of viewers and editors on the Chinese Wikipedia were from Taiwan and Hong Kong.Chinese Wikipedia, Active editors by country , Wikimedia StatisticsChinese Wikipedia, Page views by country , Wikimedia Statistics
Wikipedians from China, Taiwan, and other regions have engaged in editing conflicts over political topics related to Cross-Straits relations. Due to the censorship in mainland China, Chinese Wikipedia's audience comes primarily from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and the diasporas in Malaysia, the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Korea (including Koreans from China), totaling approximately 60 million people. Chinese Wikipedia has more than 9,100 active editors as of July 2021, and this number is increasing.List of Wikipedias as of 29 July 2021. meta.wikimedia.org, retrieved in 29 July 2021.
Administrators There are 63 administrators on Chinese Wikipedia in 2026.
Meetings
The first Chinese Wikipedian meeting was held in Beijing on 25 July 2004. Since then, Chinese Wikipedians from different regions have held many gatherings in Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, Shenyang, Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Currently, a regular meetup is held once every two weeks in Shanghai, Taipei and Hong Kong, and once every month in Tainan City, Taiwan. In July 2006, Taiwanese Wikipedians also held a "travelling meetup", travelling by train through four Taiwanese cities over a period of two days. In August 2006, Hong Kong hosted the first annual Chinese Wikimedia Conference.
State persecution of volunteers Chinese Wikipedia volunteers who edit topics that state authorities consider controversial, such as the Hong Kong protests, can face harassment and persecution.
Automatic conversion between traditional and simplified Chinese characters
Original situation Originally, there were virtually two Chinese Wikipedias under the names of "zh" (or "zh-cn") and "zh-tw". Generally, users from regions that used traditional Chinese characters (such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau) wrote and edited articles using traditional Chinese characters whereas those from regions that used simplified Chinese characters (such as mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia) wrote using simplified Chinese characters. Many articles had two uncoordinated versions; for example, there was both a traditional () and simplified () article on France. Further exacerbating the problem were differences in vocabulary (particularly nouns) and writing systems between mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. For example, a pineapple is called in mainland China and in Hong Kong and Macau, but in Singapore and Malaysia and in Taiwan.
Solution To avoid this near-forking of the project, starting around January 2005, the Chinese Wikipedia began providing a server-side mechanism to automatically convert different characters and vocabulary items into the user's local ones, according to the user's preference settings, which may be set to one of two settings that convert the script only, or one of six settings that also take into account regional vocabulary differences:
Variant's name Chinese name ISO Simplified zh-Hans Traditional zh-Hant Simplified and using mainland Chinese terms zh-CN Traditional and using Taiwanese terms zh-TW Simplified and using Singaporean (and until mid 2018, Malaysian) terms ( until mid 2018) zh-SG Simplified and using Malaysian terms (added in mid 2018) zh-MY Traditional and using Hong Kong (and until mid 2013, Macau) terms ( until mid 2013) zh-HK Traditional and using Macau terms (added in mid 2013) zh-MO No conversion (displaying the unnormalized article as originally written by contributors) For more information, see:meta:automatic conversion between simplified and traditional Chinese.
Conversion is done through conversion tables. The main tables are edited by administrators. When these are insufficient, editors can write page-specific conversion rules or use markup for one-time conversion of a single phrase.
Furthermore, page title conversion is used for automatic page redirection. Those articles previously named in different characters or different translations have been merged, and can be reached by means of both traditional and simplified Chinese titles.
Differences with other versions of Wikipedia According to a survey conducted between April 2010 and March 2011, edits to the Chinese Wikipedia were 37.8% from Taiwan, 26.2% from Hong Kong, 17.7% from mainland China, 6.1% from United States, and 2.3% from Canada.
Many editing controversies arise from current and historical political events in Chinese-speaking regions, such as the political status of Taiwan, the independence movement and autonomy movement of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, and issues of the Chinese Communist Party and Kuomintang.
Wikipedia in other varieties of Chinese
The Chinese Wikipedia is based on written vernacular Chinese, the official Chinese written language in all Chinese-speaking regions, including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore. This register is largely associated with the grammar and vocabulary of Standard Chinese, the official spoken language of mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore (but not exclusively of Hong Kong and Macau, which largely use Cantonese).