At the end of nineteenth century, people involved in the Reform Movement thought China’s weakness derived from “Lack of enlightenment” of the people. “Lack of enlightenment” of the people came from the trouble and difficulty in learning Chinese. Starting from general education, there is the need to reform Chinese. As a result, some people proposed alphabetical systems.

1912 The Department of Education of the Republic of China resolved to use “The Adoption of the Phonetic Alphabet Proposition”. There are 39 phonetic alphabets, with 6,500 validated Chinese characters. Later the number of validated characters were extended to 13,000.

1919 The first edition of the “Official Chinese Pronunciation Dictionary” was published. It followed the ordering of “Kangxi Dictionary”

The preparatory committee for the Unification of Chinese Language was established. This is the organization affiliated to the Department of Education to promote official language during the time of the Northern government and the Republic of China. It consisted of “The Composition of Chinese Characters Committee”, “The Romanization of Official Chinese Phonetic Research Committee”, “The Pronunciation Review Committee”, and “The Official Chinese Dictionary Codification Office”.

1920 At the 6th National Education Federation Conference, according to the proposal by Shiyi Zhang, it is decided that the Official Chinese pronunciation will be based on Peking (later Beijing) dialect. It was stipulated that the “Official Chinese Pronunciation Dictionary” will be revised accordingly and released immediately.

1921 The “Corrected Official Chinese Pronunciation Dictionary” was published. It is ordered according to radicals. (It is considered to be the second edition of the “Official Chinese Pronunciation Dictionary”)

1928 The original “Official Chinese Dictionary Codification Office” under the Preparatory Committee was renamed the “Chinese Dictionary Codification Office”. To continue the enhancement on the “Official Chinese Pronunciation Dictionary”. The office address is in the four West Buildings of Benevolence Hall, the former Presidential residence in the Central Seas (now serves as part of the central headquarters for the Communist Party of China)

The setup of the “Chinese Dictionary Codification Office” is huge: there were 5 Departments: collection, investigation, organization, codification, and statistics. Under the departments, there were 15 groups. The first four years, all personnels are involved in collection. They were collecting information from 440 types of books and newspapers, creating 2.5 million cards. At that time, this big number can only be compared with Britain’s “Oxford English Dictionary”. The office set up a statistics department. It is the first ever in Chinese dictionary codification history to select character and word based on their frequencies of usage.

1932 The “Official Pronounciation for Commonly Used Words” was published. Xuantong Qian was it chief editor, Dizhou Bai, Jialin Xiao as editors, and Yuanren Zhou, Yi Wang reviewed. It was ordered for public use by the then Ministor of Education, Jiaye Zhu.. It became the earliest dictionary to use standard official pronunciation based on Peking (Beijing) dialect. (This was considered the third ediction of the “Official Pronunciation Dictionary”)

1947 The four volume “Official Chinese Dictionary” was published. The codification was advocated and lead by Jinxi Li. Professor Li also wrote the preface. It was using words coming from college textbook as standard. The dictionary includes 15,000 Chinese characters, 90,000 phrases, with 105,000 entries in total. Among them, the first volume was published in 1937. (During the Japanese occupation, there was an eight volume edition published, including many words strongly influened by Japan)

1957 The mainland published abridged “Official Chinese Dictionary”, omitting technical terms. It has 70,000 entries.

In Taiwan, the “Official Chinese Dictionary” is still in high demand. It was an important dictionary and a crucial instrument in promoting Mandarin.

1949 “New Radical Indexed Official Pronunciation Dictionary” was published. It has 15,000 entires. (It is considered the fourth edition of the “Official Pronunciation Dictionary”)

The “Updated Common Words with Annotated Official Pronunciation” was published. It was ordered by pronunciation, phonetic alphabet. It has radical index. It includes 15,000 entries. (It is considered the 5th edition of the “Official Chinese Pronunciation Dictionary”)

1957 The first edition of “Xinhua Dictionary” (New China Dictionary) was published. The chief editor was Jiangong Wei. It was published by New China Dictionary and Book Press. Up to the current time, there have been 12 editions.

1960 “Modern Chinese Dictionary” was codified by the Language Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

A “trial edition” was printed in 1960 to solicit comments. The “trial edition” was printed for review in 1965. It was circulated internally in 1973. The first official edition was published in 1978. Up to now, there have been 9 editions. It has been awarded the National Book Award, the Excellence in Scientific Research Award of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and the National Dictionary Awards.

Reference:

The First Professional Body for Dictionary Codification in Modern Times – The Chinese Dictionary Codification Office by Jiarong Wang