Spelling Chinese

Beginning this week, TIME will adopt the Pinyin (Chinese for phonetic spelling) system of transcribing Chinese names of people and places into English. Earlier this year, Peking officially changed to Pinyin spellings in its foreign-language publications; U.S. Government agencies, as well as many newspapers, magazines and news services in America, Europe and Australia have subsequently decided to follow suit.

Pinyin is a somewhat less cumbersome method of rendering Chinese words in alphabetic form than the traditional Wade-Giles system, which employs apostrophes and hyphens. Examples: Hua Guofeng instead of Hua Kuofeng; Deng Xiaoping instead of Teng Hsiao-p'ing. Initially, TIME plans to use the Pinyin spellings with the conventional Wade-Giles rendering in parentheses. There will be exceptions. Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong in Pinyin) and other familiar figures of history will not appear in their Pinyin form. Nor will such widely used place names as Peking (Beijing in Pinyin), Canton (Guangzhou), Tibet (Xizang) or Hong Kong (Xianggang). China will remain China, and not become Zhongguo.

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