Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has defied the Chinese government by refusing to censor politically sensitive entries, and he is challenging other internet companies, including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, to justify their claim that they can do more good than harm by cooperating with Beijing, writes the Guardian (U.K.).

Wikipedia has been banned by China since October. Wales will meet senior Chinese officials in an attempt to persuade them to allow the website's 1.3 million articles to appear there uncensored. Wales said censorship was "antithetical to the philosophy of Wikipedia," which has internal rules to ensure neutral reporting - "exactly what an encyclopedia should do," he says.

Wikipedia's entry on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, for example, includes the government's official claim that 200-300 died, as well as Chinese student associations' and Chinese Red Cross's estimate of 2,000-3,000 deaths.