China's basketball star Yao Ming and Olympic 110m hurdles champion Liu
Xiang have been included in the second edition of the Encyclopedia of China,
which will be published this year, sources with the Encyclopedia of China
Publishing House said.
Chief editor Liu Hang said there had been a heated debate among the editorial
staff about who should be included in the volume.
They agreed to choose "typical personalities with a great influence in their
own field and also in history," Liu said.
Director Zhang Yimou and China's first astronaut Yang Liwei have also been
included, while Yi Zhongtian, a currently popular TV lecturer and Wang Shuo, a
writer whose words and behaviors have recently triggered fierce debate among
netizens, have been left out, he said.
The new 60-million-word edition of the encyclopedia draws on a corpus of 32
volumes, 60,000 items, 30,000 pictures and 1,000 maps.
The first large-sized comprehensive encyclopedia in China, the Encyclopedia
of China saw its first edition published in 1993.
