By far the largest, most authoritative and up-to-date single-volume Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionary in print, the Oxford Chinese Dictionary is the result of a remarkable collaboration of scholars working in Oxford, Hong Kong, and mainland China. It has been produced using the latest lexicographic methods and is based on research in both the Oxford English Corpus and the LIVAC corpus from the City University of Hong Kong.

The result is truly a definitive dictionary, with over 300,000 words and phrases and 370,000 translations, including the latest vocabulary from computing, business, the media, and the arts, as well as tens of thousands of example phrases illustrating key points of construction and usage. There are over 300 cultural notes giving essential information about many aspects of life and culture in the Chinese- and English-speaking worlds. Extensive supplementary material includes sample letters and emails, guides to telephoning and text messaging in both Chinese and English, chronologies of Chinese history and culture, and features on particularly difficult aspects of the Chinese language. There are also over 50 pages of lexical and usage notes which contain helpful information about the Chinese and English languages.