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.

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 consensus 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