I came across an online encyclopedia called wikipedia. One thing cool about it is everyone and log on and make changes to the site and contents. I notice that there is a lack of information on Chinese ancient military technology on the web, so it might be a good idea to post some info on this site and make Chinese ancient military available to everyone on the web. I have already posted a seige crossbow image on the "crossbow" page.

Here is what I have done.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow

Here is the page on wikipedia about Chinese military.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_History_of_China


If anyone can think of anything to add or contribute, feel free to do so.

Good on you for enthusiasm and improving the sites but I grow more sceptical about Wikipedia over time. It would be unfair to quote it in support of any debate as there are no sources to the facts and dates provided on it...therefore useless for academic purposes and sometime unintentionally misleading.
The picture of the arcu-ballista there needs qualifying as a Song era seige device, and not a Chinese crossbow as such.
The dates I saw in there for various developments were wrong. Although Stephen Selby doesn't identify precisely what within a tomb he dates to the Warring States period was evidence of the repeating crossbow I will give him the benefit of the doubt (although I dont agree on everything.) it seems to have been around at an earlier date.
The crossbows date for Chinese use there short changes them by around 3 centuries. The crossbow wasn't just 'well developed' by the Han as implied but was a critical feature of the miltary during Eastern Zhou...existing from 500BC. This just shows how Wikipedia might mislead a researcher.
The linguistic evidence (unspecified) that it existed earlier than this in South East Asia is both unfair, unsubstantiated, and certainly wrong. Bronze mechanisms are the proof of the military crossbows existence and the Chinese bronze casters had the skill to make these. An ancient characters translation in another language is not enough, as S. Selby notes implied evidence for very simple Chinese crossbows has been bought forward by others from even late Neolithic times but without real proof he rightly treats it with scepticism.
What I really like is the picture of the remains of an ancient Chinese crossbow stock (warped but mostly intact). This is only the second crossbow from those times I have seen shown so well preserved.
Really, the site sells the Chinese early invention rather short..but is correct about the remarkable draw weights by the much much later winch loaded European devices.
I hope real students of such periods will cross check information there as a reputable text book will make people aware of when Wikipedia has got it wrong.

On the "Song" dynasty crossbow picture, I have doubts on the accuracy of the design shown. From a structural point of view, the winch is very poorly located and would have collapsed the two rear legs when drawing the bowstring backward. This picture is probably a modern artist rendition which was drawn with little understanding of the actual structure. Read my posts in my "Making the TripleBow Siege Crossbow (Sangong Chuangzi Nu)" thread.

Don't miss the link below, the author gives reason for his localization.

http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tm17/paper459.htm