"China is making an official version of Wikipedia" is, despite the international headlines, not news at all - it's already there. Just head to http://ecph.cnki.net to see it, live, online, right now.

China is not creating the site, just updating it.

Partially false reports have spread in the past few days over this encyclopedia, many of which mention how "China filters Wikipedia," implying that the country will completely block the website once its own version is complete.

Well, China's answer to Wikipedia is already online, and so is Wikipedia. So where's the blocking?

China started developing its own encyclopedia in 1978, and the first official version was published in 1993.

The digital version was published on CD-ROM disks in 1999, and put online soon after.

The latest version that can be currently accessed was published in 2009, when Encyclopædia Britannica was still available in a hard, non-digital form. The US Chicago company gave up publishing hard copies of its encyclopedias in 2012 the same time as Encyclopædia Britannica.

The "Chinese official Wikipedia" everyone's talking about is the third version of the encyclopedia, which was planned in 2011 and has not yet been completed.

Just like its British brother, Encyclopedia of China will shift its focus to becoming an exclusively online publication.

"I prefer the phrase 'brought online' to 'published' when talking about the future launch of our work," deputy chief editor of the site Ma Rujun told a Beijing newspaper back in 2013.

While we wait for the Encyclopedia of China's latest version to go online, netizens in the country head to Baidu Baike when they hunt for, or want to share their knowledge. The website has been the go-to stop for trivia, research and homework help since its launch in 2006.

China is updating its encyclopedia, the next version of which will be published online in 2018. This information has been known to the public since 2011. So the news here is that there actually is no news here.