Wikipedia was first introduced by mainland Chinese media in the newspaper China Computer Education on 20 October 2003, in the article "I join to write an encyclopedia" (我也来写百科全书).
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 mainland China who were taking efforts to make the Chinese Wikipedia grow.
The Chinese transcription of "Wiki" is composed of two characters: 維 (维), whose ancient sense refers to "ropes or webs connecting objects", and which alludes to the Internet; and 基, meaning the "foundations of a building", or "fundamental aspects of things in general".
According to Wikimedia Statistics, in January 2021, the majority of viewers and editors on the Chinese Wikipedia were from Taiwan and Hong Kong.
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.
For example, the six most edited articles as of August 2007 were Taiwan, Chinese culture, China itself, Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek, and Hong Kong, in that order.
[14] 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, South Korea (including Koreans from China), totaling approximately 60 million people.
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.
Chinese Wikipedia volunteers who edit on topics considered controversial by state authorities, such as the Hong Kong protests, can face harassment and persecution.
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 菠萝 in mainland China, {{lang|zh-Hant|菠蘿]], in Hong Kong and Macau, 黄梨 in Singapore and Malaysia, and 鳳梨 in Taiwan.
However, they were met with significant opposition, based on the fact that Mandarin-based Vernacular Chinese is the only form used in scholarly or academic contexts.
As of the end of November 2014, there were a total of 1,496 articles on the Eastern Min Wikipedia, with one administrator and one active editor (one who registered and edited more than five times a month).
For users who are not familiar with vernacular characters, a Hakka dictionary and a simple comparison table are provided on the homepage.
Possibly related to this, on 31 May an article from the IDG News Service was published,[30] discussing the Chinese Wikipedia's treatment of the protests.
[34][35][36] In December 2006, the International Herald Tribune Asia-Pacific[37] published an article saying that sensitive topics received subdued treatment on the Chinese Wikipedia.
But on sensitive questions of China's modern history or on hot-button issues, the Chinese version diverges so dramatically from its English counterpart that it sometimes reads as if it were approved by the censors themselves.
For some, the Chinese version of Wikipedia was intended as just such a resource, but its tame approach to sensitive topics has sparked a fierce debate in the world of online mavens over its objectivity and thoroughness.
Some say the object should be to spread reliable information as widely as possible, and that, in any case, self-censorship is pointless because the government still frequently blocks access to Wikipedia for most Chinese Internet users.
'There is a lot of confusion about whether they should obey the neutral point of view or offer some compromises to the government,' said Isaac Mao, a well-known Chinese blogger and user of the encyclopedia.
The comment stated: ... control over our content does not stem from any political motive, and we try to the extent of our abilities (even if we cannot do it perfectly) to prevent the influence of ideology; the motive, goal, and standards of control are very clear: to create an encyclopedia with rich content, good quality, and open copyright.
Unfortunately, even a reputable international media source such as the New York Times was unable to find out the actual situation before passing biased judgment on Wikipedia.
[44] Chinese academics Li-hao Gan and Bin-Ting Weng published a paper titled "Opportunities And Challenges Of China's Foreign Communication in the Wikipedia",[45] in which they argue that "due to the influence by foreign media, Wikipedia entries have a large number of prejudiced words against the Chinese government".
[47] Lokman Tsui, an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in an interview with the BBC that "there are some misunderstandings about China abroad".
[48] In October 2021, WMF's application to become an observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was blocked by the Chinese government over the existence of a Wikimedia Foundation affiliate in Taiwan and accusation of "anti-China false information".
On October 7, 2021, at the 62nd session of the World Intellectual Property Organization, the People's Republic of China voted against the Wikimedia Foundation's application to become an official observer of the WIPO on the grounds that Wikipedia violated the "one-China principle" and "disseminated false information".
According to the Slate, "one former Chinese Wikipedia editor told me that over the past few years there has been a 'defection' of volunteer editors leaving Baidu Baike to join Chinese Wikipedia because the contributors wanted the privilege of working on a higher-quality internet encyclopedia—one that also carries a great deal of international power.
[64] As of October 2009, Hudong surpassed Baidu Baike as China's largest online encyclopedia in terms of number of articles it owns.
Whereas the Chinese Wikipedia is released under the GNU Free Documentation License, Baidu Baike and Hudong are fully copyrighted by their ownership; contributors forfeit all rights upon submission.