Chinese telegraph code

The PRC’s Standard Telegraph Codebook (Ministry of Post and Telecommunications 2002) provides codes for approximately 7,000 Chinese characters.

Senders convert their messages written with Chinese characters to a sequence of digits according to the codebook.

For instance, the phrase 中文信息 (Zhōngwén xìnxī), meaning “information in Chinese,” is rendered into the code as 0022 2429 0207 1873.

The Standard Telegraph Codebook gives alternative three-letter code (AAA, AAB, ...) for Chinese characters.

[3]: 36  Septime Auguste Viguier, a French customs officer in Shanghai, published a codebook of Chinese characters in 1872, supplanting an earlier work by Danish astronomer Hans Schjellerup.

[3]: 36 In consideration of the former code's insufficiency and disorder of characters, Zheng Guanying compiled a new codebook in 1881.

Business forms provided by the government and corporations in Hong Kong often require filling out telegraph codes for Chinese names.

For instance, investigators following a subject in Taiwan named Hsiao Ai-Kuo might not know this is the same person known in mainland China as Xiao Aiguo and Hong Kong as Siu Oi-Kwok until codes are checked for the actual Chinese characters to determine all match as CTC: 5618/1947/0948 for 萧爱国 (simplified) / 蕭愛國 (traditional).