China's basketball star Yao Ming and Olympic 110m hurdles¹ champion Liu Xiang have been included in the second edition of the Encyclopedia² of China, which will be published this year, sources with the Encyclopedia of China Publishing House said.

Liu Hang, main editor of the encyclopedia said the editors had a hot discussion about whom is to be included in the volume of figures.

At last they reached the consensus³ of "choosing the typical characters with a great influence in their own fields and also to the 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 denied by the book, he said.

The new 60-million-word edition of the encyclopedia, which has been compiled for 12 years, draws on a corpus of 32 volumes, 60,000 items, 30,000 pictures and 1,000 maps.

The Encyclopedia of China is the first large-sized comprehensive encyclopedia in China. Its first edition was published in 1993