It was primarily conceived by Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), who led a group of linguists on the National Languages Committee in refining the system between 1925 and 1926.

[1] GR indicates the four tones of Standard Chinese by varying the spelling of syllables, a method originally proposed by team member Lin Yutang (1895–1976).

Widespread adoption of the system was also hindered by its narrow calibration to the Beijing dialect, during a period when China lacked the strong central government needed to impose use of a national spoken language.

During the final decades of the Qing, liberal reformers among the Chinese intelligentsia had begun seeking ways to modernize the country's institutions.

[3] The tumultuous Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation held in 1913 resulted in the adoption of a "national pronunciation"[b] designed as a compromise featuring characteristics of numerous varieties spoken across China; however, this meant a form of speech that was itself artificial and spoken by no one, and the struggling Beiyang government had few means to promote its use among the general population.

While Chao had supported the compromise national pronunciation, factors including his correspondence with the prominent linguist Bernhard Karlgren (1889–1978) encouraged his work on a new romanization system attuned to the Beijing dialect.

[10] During 1925 and 1926, its details were developed by a team of five linguists under the auspices of the National Languages Committee: Chao, Lin, Li Jinxi (1890–1978), Qian Xuantong (1887–1939), and Wang Yi [ja] (汪怡; 1875–1960[11]).

[17] During the 1930s, two short-lived attempts were made to teach Gwoyeu Romatzyh to railway workers and peasants in Henan and Shandong.

[18] Support for GR was confined to a small number of trained linguists and sinologists, including Qian Xuantong and Luo Changpei in China and Walter Simon in England.

A competing "Latinization" movement coalesced around leaders like Qu Qiubai (1899–1935), and the Latinxua Sin Wenz systems—often identifying with the Communists, and likewise opposing the KMT.

Several prominent Chinese people have used GR to transliterate their names, such as the mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern; however, neither Chao nor Lin did.

[24] In 1958, the Chinese government officially replaced it with Hanyu Pinyin, which had been developed by a team led by Zhou Youguang (1906–2017) over the previous two years.

In 1986, the Taiwanese government officially replaced GR with the modified Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II system.

It was a parallel text featuring the original Literary Chinese as well as vernacular translation,[41] in addition to GR and romanized Japanese transliterations prepared by Simon.

The fourth issue, now rendered as Xin Talng, used a system that adapted pinyin to use tonal spelling akin to GR.