Rumor said that the GB18030 standardization working committee has been disbanded some weeks ago, and GB (Q) 18030-2000 standard is pending to be abandoned soon. In addition, the new identity card system developed by the Ministry of Public Security has been stuck because of Chinese coding problem.

Not being cynical, but I have to say that it is a shame to see such a standard appeared and adopted by so many vendors and then be thrown into recycle bin because its foolishness and neglect of ordinary usage practice, as well as international standard. GB18030 was pushed out in a rush because someone wants 「to make our vendors to compete easier in our market, and prevent foreign vendors to get into our market because they simply need time to learn it!」 Well, easy come easy go, it’s true that there are some characters we can only see in GB18030, however, it is not a reason why it is going to conflict with Unicode, standardized by the ISO, which our country is an important member of.

I am really happy to see if GB18030 is actually going away and we finally adopt Unicode. Unicode is a standard set up by ISO, in other words, joint of many countries including us, there is no apparent or reasonable reason to reject it because, as a responsible large country having 1/4 people around the world, it is important to respect something, at least, are our saying. Moreover, technical reasons should be rule when it is technical problem, not the political reasons. We HATE politics, because we want to live better, not to hear something supposed to be better!