中國版的Wikipedia剛剛被允許開張，但是，網上的許多名詞解釋，卻因為網友們的自我檢查、或對歷史或政治的認識在長期共產教育下有所不同，出現對同一事件或名詞，中國版與其他版本完全不同的解讀。
例如毛澤東、或台灣，中國版的說明與其他版本大相逕庭。以台灣為例，英文版對台灣的歷史就提及1871牡丹社事件，日本般隻遇難被台灣牡丹社原住民傷害，日本政府向清國要求處理，得到的答案是清國說台灣不在其統轄權下。但是中國版對台灣的描述竟可溯自第三世紀台灣就與中國有往來關係等。甚至還把台灣的原住民說成是直接或間接來自中國，而非南島民族。當然，如果查天安門，中國版是查不到內容的。
Chinese-language Wikipedia presents different view of history
By Howard W. French
The New York Times
Just who was Mao Zedong?
According to the English-language version of Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, he was a victorious military and political leader who founded China’s modern Communist state. He was also a man many saw as "a mass murderer, holding his leadership accountable for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent Chinese."
Switch to Wikipedia in Chinese, and one discovers a very different man. There, Mao Zedong’s reputation is unsullied by any mention of a death toll in the great purges of the 1950s and 1960s, or for what many historians call the greatest famine in human history.
In recent weeks, the Chinese government has demonstrated its hostility toward the emergence of a credible source of reference material that escapes its control by frequently blocking access to Wikipedia, whose Chinese version, though still far smaller than its English-language counterpart, is growing by leaps and bounds.
Jimmy Wales, a co-founder of Wikipedia, said during a phone interview Wednesday that access to both English- and Chinese-language versions of Wikipedia had again been blocked on the mainland for the past couple of weeks for unexplained reasons, though the Wikipedia usage levels are rising anyway as Web surfers evaded the Chinese firewalls.
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.
This gulf in information and perspective comes across powerfully in the entry on Mao and in the entry on historical watersheds, like the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Chinese Wikipedia users and critics say that the differences highlight the resilience here of a system of information control whose reach goes well beyond simple censorship.
In each of its language versions, Wikipedia is collaboratively written and edited by online enthusiasts, and contributors to the Chinese-language site explain the differences in content by citing the powerful influence of Chinese education, which often provides a neatly sanitized national perspective on sensitive aspects of the country’s past.
This parochialism is reinforced by the blocking of foreign Web sites, and by the conformism of the carefully censored mass media. Alternative viewpoints are sometimes available, but usually only to a restricted circle of people who have the means and the determination to seek them out.
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.
In a recent discussion on the Web site about Mao, a user with the online name Manchurian Tiger wrote, "If anyone can prove that Mao’s political movements didn’t kill so many people, I’m willing to delete the wording that ’millions of people were killed.’" Rather than contribute to encyclopedias, those who wish to pay tribute to Mao, he added, should "go to his mausoleum."
Another user replied angrily: "If you want to release your emotions, use a bulletin board. Wikipedia is not your toilet." In the end, the entry on Mao included no death toll from either famine or political purges.
Indeed, in its present form, the Chinese Wikipedia introduction to Mao could hardly be more anodyne: "One of the main founders and leaders of the Communist Party of China, the People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Republic of China," it reads. "He introduced a series of political movements such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. He had a great influence over 20th-century China and the world."
On the evidence of entries like this, for the moment, the fight over editorial direction of Wikipedia in Chinese is being won by enthusiasts who practice self-censorship.
"Most of the people who contribute to Wikipedia rarely touch upon political topics," said Yuan Mingli, a frequent contributor from Shanghai. "They prefer to write about things like technology. There are other things in life."
Others denounce compromises on content as a deviation from the original mission of Wikipedia, which they say is to spread reliable information and to seek truth. In any case, they add, self- censorship has already proved naïve because Beijing still frequently blocks access 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 Chinese blogger and user of the encyclopedia. "To the local Wikipedians, the first objective is to make it well- known among Chinese, to get people to understand the principles of Wikipedia step by step, and not to get the thing blocked by the government. The government doesn’t buy into their attitude."
After Mao, few questions are treated as more sacrosanct in China than the status of Taiwan, which every pupil is taught is irrevocably part of China. To publicly suggest that the Taiwanese have any historical basis for asserting their independence from China would be a career-ending offense for anyone in academia or in the media.
The English-language version of the encyclopedia speaks of a Japanese shipwreck off Taiwan in 1871, in which 54 crew members were beheaded by Taiwanese aborigines. Japan demanded compensation from China, only to be told that Taiwan was not within China’s jurisdiction. The Chinese-language entry on Taiwan, meanwhile, is silent on the jurisdiction question.
Similarly, the English-language Wikipedia mentions the settlement of Taiwan by aborigines who are genetically related to Malaysians, about 4,000 years ago. It also places the first meaningful settlement of the island by Chinese in the 16th century.
The Chinese version of Wikipedia, though, merely speaks of cultural affinities with Malaysians and speculates about the possible exploration of the island by Chinese from the third century.
Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, said that Wikipedia data show that the majority of contributors to the Chinese version are not from the mainland but from Taiwan, Hong Kong and around the world, so he was "a bit surprised" to find that the mainland entries had been de- fanged of their controversial elements.
He said that divergence was not unique to China; English- and French- language entries on the same topics in some cases began quite differently but over time became similar the broader the access. He expects the same phenomenon to affect Chinese entries.
Wales plans a trip to China in the spring to present to government officials his case that the vast majority of the 100,000 articles in the Chinese version are politically uninteresting. "We’re talking about biology and tigers and chemistry," he said.
A parallel, and purely homegrown, effort at creating an online encyclopedia in China, Baidu Baike, skirts controversies altogether. Baidu Baike, which is owned by the biggest Internet search engine company in China, asserts that Taiwan’s original inhabitants "came from mainland China directly or indirectly," and not from Malaysia.
Similarly, a user who searches for the Tiananmen Square massacre will find no entry.
As online reference sites grow in popularity here, Baidu Baike benefits from government efforts to block Wikipedia, just as the same company’s search engine once benefited from similar blockage of Google.
Baidu Baike, much of whose content appears to be copied directly from Wikipedia, would not release detailed user statistics, saying only that it has "several million" users each day. A spokeswoman for the company, Zhang Yan, said it is guided by the editorial policy of not "judging the existing national system with malice." Asked to explain what this meant, Zhang said, "Anyone who is Chinese knows."
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