Pinyin History

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In 1954, the Ministry of Education of the PRC assigned a Committee (Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language) to reform the written language. This committee developed Hanyu Pinyin based upon existing systems of that time (Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931, it uses the diacritic markings from Zhuyin)[1]. The main force behind Pinyin was Zhou Youguang (born 1905, turning 103 in 2008 in good health). [2] [3] Zhou Youguan was working in a New York bank when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the war. He became an economics professor in Shanghai. The government assigned him to help the development of a new romanisation system. The switch to language and writing largely saved him from the wrath of the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong.

A first draft was published on February 12 1956. The first edition of Hanyu Pinyin was approved and adopted at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress on February 11, 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Mandarin pronunciation, and used to improve the literacy rate among adults. In 2001, the Chinese Government issued the National Common Language Law, providing a legal basis for applying pinyin.[4]

Hanyu Pinyin system superseded older romanization systems such as Wade-Giles (1859; modified 1892) and Chinese Postal Map Romanization, and replaced Zhuyin as the method of Chinese phonetic instruction in mainland China. Hanyu Pinyin was adopted in 1979 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as the standard romanization for modern Chinese (ISO-7098:1991). It has also been accepted by the Government of Singapore, the Library of Congress, the American Library Association, and many other international institutions. It has also become a useful tool for entering Chinese language text into computers.