It aims at providing accessible and accurate versions of a wide range of texts,[1] particularly those relating to Chinese philosophy, and the site is credited with providing one of the most comprehensive and accurate collections of classical Chinese texts on the Internet.

[4] Many texts also have English and Chinese translations, which are paired with the original text paragraph by paragraph as well as phrase by phrase for ease of comparison; this makes it possible for the system to be used as a useful scholarly research tool even by students with little or no knowledge of Chinese.

[5] As well as providing customized search functionality suited to Chinese texts,[6][7] the site also attempts to make use of the unique format of the web to offer a range of features relevant to sinologists, including an integrated dictionary, word lists, parallel passage information,[8] scanned source texts, concordance and index data,[9] a metadata system, Chinese commentary display,[10] a published resources database, and a discussion forum in which threads can be linked to specific data on the site.

[11][12] The "Library" section of the site also includes scanned copies of over 25 million pages of early Chinese texts,[13][4] linked line by line to transcriptions in the full-text database, many created using Optical Character Recognition,[14] and edited and maintained using an online crowd-sourcing wiki system.

[15][16] Textual data and metadata can also be exported using an Application Programming Interface, allowing integration with other online tools as well as use in text mining and digital humanities projects.