Hànyǔ pīnyīn (‘Chinese Spelling’) romanization was drafted in the People’s Republic of China and was officially introduced by a resolution of the People’s Congress on February 11, 1958. Its implementation was situated in the context of language and script reforms during the 1950s devised by the new Chinese government. The development of a new system for the representation of the sounds of standard Chinese was one of the main tasks of those reforms, besides the reform (simplification) of Chinese characters and popularization of the standard Chinese language (Pǔtōnghuà 普通話).

With the …