This book presents the most comprehensive synthesis and analysis of major developments in reforming programs in modernizing the Chinese writing system. It traces the language policy and planning related developments for Chinese characters, with particular emphasis on post-1950 period in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the more recent challenges that technology, and particularly the World Wide Web, have posed for the language.

Zhao Shouhui (PhD, University of Sydney) is Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP), NIE at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. A professional language teacher by training, Zhao has been teaching and researching in Chinese applied linguistics for the past 19 years at 7 universities in five countries beginning in 1988, when he completed his MA in Chinese Applied Linguistics at Renmin University of China (Beijing). Zhao is a member of All-China Society of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language and the Singapore Association of Applied Linguistics. He has published in the areas of linguistics and education. Zhao is the primary co-author of three dual-authored Chinese language textbooks and the co-complier of two dictionaries. He has also contributed a number of ephemeral pieces (e.g., prose, short stories, film reviews, etc.) to a range of literary publications, websites and broadcasts.

Richard B. Baldauf Jr. (PhD, University of Hawai’i) is Associate Professor of TESOL in the School of Education at the University of Queensland and is on the Executive of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA). He has published numerous articles in refereed journals and books. He is co-editor of Language Planning and Education in Australasia and the South Pacific (Multilingual Matters, 1990), principal researcher and editor for the Viability of Low Candidature LOTE Courses in Universities (DEET, 1995) and co-author with Robert B. Kaplan of Language Planning from Practice to Theory (Multilingual Matters, 1997) and Language and Language-in-Education Planning in the Pacific Basin (Kluwer, 2003). He is Executive Editor of the journal Current Issues in Language Planning and co-editor of six volumes in the Multilingual Matters Series, Language Planning and Policy.