The newly revised mandatory national standard, GB 18030-2022, Information technology – Chinese coded character set, will come into effect on August 1, 2023. Standardization Administration of China (SAC), Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), and the State Language Commission held a launch event to release and publicize the standard in Beijing on July 28. Chinese characters are an essential part of the Chinese culture, which are not only used in daily life, but also carry the history. Therefore, literal encoding plays a fundamental role in the digital era.
Tian Shihong, Vice-Minister of State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) and Administrator of SAC, Zhang Yunming, Vice-Minister of MIIT, and Tian Xuejun, Vice-Minister of Education and Head of State Language Commission, addressed the event. Also, nearly 50 participants from the standard drafting units and relevant departments attended the event.
Literal coding is the important basis of informatization, and standardization enables literal coding to play a big role. And the standardization of Chinese coded characters is needed in both the process of inheriting and developing the traditional culture of the Chinese nation and realizing the handling of governmental affairs via internet, Tian said. The standard is the most important one in the area of the Chinese language information technology, which provides the uniform coding of Chinese characters and the languages of ethnic minority groups in China to realize a wide range of application. First published in 2000 and revised in 2005, the standard has satisfied the demands of processing and exchanges of information in Chinese languages.
The standard includes a total of 87,887 Chinese characters with more than 17,000 rare characters added. It can meet various needs, providing strong guarantee for inheriting the Chinese culture, enhancing information processing capability and satisfying the demands of using rare characters.
Source: China Standardization Magazine, 5th issue, 2022.
