Chinese attempts at alphabetic writing can be traced back to the Western missionaries of the late Ming Dynasty,Matteo Ricci, used Western alphabetic writing to write Chinese words, which had a certain influence at that time. In the late Qing Dynasty, with the failures of the Opium War and the Sino-Japanese War, the nation was in a state of peril.In such a critical period Some knowledgeable individuals started to reflect on the cultural level and believed that China’s backwardness was due to undeveloped technology because of poor education, and suggested learning from Japan and pursuing modernization, proposing various text reform programs.

The New Culture Movement of the May Fourth period had a significant impact on Chinese character reform. Hu Shi proposed a literary revolution and advocated for vernacular Chinese. Scholars such as Cai Yuanpei proposed the abolition of Chinese characters and the adoption of alphabetic writing, and the unification of the national language, believing that only in this way can we better connect with Western modernization and learn their technology. There was a heated debate in academia and it was found that there needed to be a transition from square characters to alphabetic writing, so Qian Xuantong proposed the use of simplified characters.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the simplified characters were further promoted, and the promotion of Mandarin and the formulation and implementation of the "Chinese Alphabetic Alphabet" began in 1956. Simplified characters are used on the Chinese mainland, while traditional characters are still used in small areas. The "Chinese Alphabetic Alphabet" has become a standard for spelling Chinese names and place names in the United Nations.