From: Yueheng Xu <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 17:52:45 -0600

Chinese Computing in Mainland China

              Yueheng Xu      Jan. 29, 1993
              Internet :     [email-masked]

    I.    Major Chinese Computing Systems and Networks used in PRC

    Up to the end of 1991 when I left Beijing, commercial quality Chinese
Computing Systems available only on PC's  ( both DOS and XENIX are available )
and Macintosh's. There had been a lot of efforts in other operating system
platforms during past 40 years, but none of them survived as a product that
can grow further. As a matter of fact, mainframe computers in PRC are
exclusively used for scientific and engineering use, therefore no much drive
for Chinese processing. In business world, no network spans farther than a
city, this is another reason that mainframes are not being used for business
purpose. Within a organization, major business systems is a stand alone PC
running dBASE III or dBASE IV, or  FoxBase ( All these have their Chinese
Version available now) for Financial report processing, running WordStar or
its Chinese variant, or PE ( only be used on Chinese Computing Systems which
can support direct video buffer access) for word processing. In contrast to the
Chinesenization (Han Hua) of major English application systems in databse and
word processing, major desktop publishing systems are mostly domestically
designed and reached a very high level of quality and I will mention them
in later section in details.

     Bigger organizations use Novell or 3Com as local area network, on which
most major Chinese Computing Systems available on DOS can easily integrated
together with the LAN. But the LAN's usage has not extended farther than
share a big font file and some printing utilities with a server. No business
activity is depend on LAN on PC and DOS.

   Here are the Chinese Systems commercially available in PRC:

  1) Chinese Computing on Macintosh:

     Basically, Macintosh are use much much less popular in PRC than that of
     PC's. The reasons are (in my opinion): 1) The major application systems
     are not available easily ( word processing and data base systems, etc.)
     2) Acceptable Chinese systems appeared on MAC's long after that of
     PC's.

     Now, as far as I know, only Hua Yuan Computer Co. located at Xi Si Bei
     Da Jie, Beijing, has a acceptable Chinese Word processing and desk top
     publishing system called Xiao Ma Que Xi Tong ( Small Swallow System).
     This company is the only Apple computer dealer in Beijing. ( compared
     with over 1,000 dealer of PC's in Beijing and about a dozen of SUN
     workstation dealer in Beijing).

  2) Chinese Computing on PC using XENIX:

     This is the only Chinese computing system that is playing an important
     role in business. The major clients are banks. In Beijing, all the
     banks are computerized now by XENIX and their city wide networks.
     ( Network carrier is just the city's public telephone systems).

     the XENIX are running in their Chinese versions. There are two groups
     of people involved in the evolution of Chinese version of XENIX. One
     is a group lead by Prof. Wei Zhou of Dept. of Computer Science of Peking
     University (Zip Code: 100871, Beijing, PRC). The other group is lead
     by Mr. Sun of Instituite of Software of Chinese Academy of Science,
     (Zip Code: 100080, Beijing, PRC).

  3) Chinese Computing on PC using DOS:

     I guesss that more than 95 % of Chinese Computer users in PRC fall in
     this categories.

     Historically, the Chinese computing on PC is the CCDOS system developed
     in  No. 6 Institute of Ministry of Electronics in Beijing in eraly 80's.
     They founded the base of GB code for Chinese processing. Now, only the GB
     code is the national standard and it is the only code system legally
     allowed to appear in PC Chinese computing market of PRC.

     Following  No.6 Institute's original work, other groups growed in the
     later years. Now, there are following major groups involved in Chinese
     Computing in PC and DOS market:

     3.1) LXPC Chinese Character System:

       This is developed by Beijing Legend Computer Group Co. ( Legend is
       its offical English name and also a name for its Hong Kong branch,
       in Chinese we call it " Lian Xiang", means associative thinking ).
       The chief designer is the chief engineer of this company,
       Prof. GuangNan Ni, who is a research professor of Institute of
       Computing Technology of Chinese Academy of Science, the founding
       mother of this company.

       There are about 100,000 users in this system all over PRC and some
       Asian and USA areas.  The main advantage of this system is that it
       support a 100 % compatibility ( at the register level ) between the
       Chinese processing and Englisg processing. The LXPC board takes
       over the Video Board's display function when working on text
       mode. So the Direct Video Buffer display is supported compatibly.

       Another advantage of this system is in its intelligent input mechanism,
       that is, its LIAN XIAN function, when you type in a Chinese Character,
       it will prompt you several words that is usaully following this
       Character, so you can reduce a lot of input effort when typing words
       and sentences. The prompt is dynamically learning your words.

       The cost of this system is about 2,000 YUAN in RMB, after changing
       font to FAN TI, it can display and print FAN TI Chinese.

       Legend has started its cooperation with Trident System Co. of California
       ( a major VGA board manufacturer, product is TVGA ) since 1991. Now
       the Chinese VGA board has been integrated into a ASIC Chip called
       DLX9200. With this chip, Legend intend to divide the market with
       Trident, that is, Legend to cover Main land, Trident to cover Taiwan,
       Hong Kong and USA.  I used to write the video BIOS for this system.
       Another gentleman now in USA who participated in this project is
       Mr. XuDong Li.  Nowdays, the project is lead by Mrs. Feifang Qing
       ( in charge of Hardware design ) and Mr. ZhiPing Xu ( in charge of
       software design ). Prof. GuanNan Ni himself are now concentrated
       in the mother board design of Legend's own PC compatibles.

       There are two branch companies of Legend in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong
       Legend and the Quantum Inc. In USA, they have branches in
       Los Angeles and Philedelphia, all in names of Quantum Inc.

     3.2) CCDOS 2.13 series

       No. 6 institute of Ministry of Electronics, the founder of CCDOS is
       now no longer engaged in the evolution of CCDOS ( a tragedy due to
       no copyright law protection for their original work, together with
       other reasons). One of their former members, Mr. XiaoJun Wu, left
       this institute and founded his own company, the Beijing XiaoJun
       Computer Corporation. Mr. Wu inherited the CCDOS system and named it
       as CCDOS 2.13, its version number is indicated by CCDOS 2.13A,
       CCDSO 2.13B, ..., the latest version is CCDOS 2.13K.

       The Feb. 13 is the first date that Mr. Wu developed his own new version
       in 1985 all by him alone when he left No. 6 Institute. So, 2.13 is
       nothing to do with the version number, it is now a trade mark.

       The main advantage of CCDOS 2.13 system is that it is the most widely
       used system all over PRC due to its early version is freely available
       and need no hardware support. Many desktop application and business
       application systems have based on this CCDOS sysetem. The users of
       this system has about 200,000, according to the sales quantity of
       the user manual of this system.

       Due to Mr. Wu's personal contribution, this CCDOS not only inherited
       all the valuable features of the early CCDOS, but augmented in following
       aspects:

        i) Printing font reached to 240 kinds. from 16x16 to 64x64, as well
           as the vectorized font which can print high quality document in
           laserJet up to any size in later versions.

        ii) All fonts are available at BIOS level, so, you can easily
            develop a WYSIWYG editor or desk top publishing systems around
            this system. You can develop a fancy presentation systems based on
            it without much effort, even by BASIC language or DOS batch
            command. Programmers can easily display beatiful title in their
            dBASE program to make the monthly financial report
            to be attractive. No other Chinese Computing system support this
            type of function.

        iii) All kinds of input schems are dynamically loadable.

         iv) In latest version, Direct Video Buffer is supported, so many
             English editors and database systems, together with LAN ssytems
             can be used together with it without modification, and Chinese
             and English can be processed transparently.

            8f System, the desktop publication system based on CCDOS 2.13
            developed by Prof. FengYi Wu of Dept. of Computer Science of
            Peking University is now the only true WYSIWYG desktop pub
            system available. It can be used for type setting of books,
            magazine, new paper, etc. including many math, engineering as
            well as music and symbol type setting support.

            Magic Brush ( Sheng Bi ), the drawing and painting utilities of
            CCDOS 2.13  can support Chinese processing in engineering and
            lecture presentation.

      3.3) Great Wall ( Chang Cheng ) Chinese System

           This system also has a major role in Chinese computing because
           Great Wall computer company is owned by the government, i.e. the
           Ministry of Electronics, all the Great Wall manufactured PC's
           are equipped as standard with a Great Wall VGA board which
           automatically support the Chinese and English processing. There
           are about 20,000 Great Wall PC's in use in PRC. Most of them are
           government agencies because lower level government who receive
           their grant from upper level government are required to buy only
           the PC's produced by a government owned company. This situation
           is changing in last 5 years since more domestic PC manufacturer
           are grown up and even paid more tax than the Great Wall company.

           The early version of Great Wall Chinese Video Board is incompatible
           with ASCII system, so Great Wall spent a lot of their resources
           to modify and even to re-write all the major application system,
           from editors, database systems, spreadsheet systems, and desktop
           pub systems.

           It is said that the latest design of Great Wall VGA has switched
           back to be compatible with ASCII system, and will therefore catch
           up with the mainstream of Chinese processing and play an important
           role in the competition.

      3.4) UCDOS Chinese System

           This system is similar to CCDOS, it was developed by a group of
           young graduate student of Chinese Academy of Science who later
           founded the Beijing Hope Computer Company. Its success in early
           years is that it is the first pure-software ( need not special
           hardware support ) system that support VGA display and can make
           use of upper memory for font storage. It is once popular because
           it is the only freely available ( due to no law protection )
           CCDOS version that can leave enough memory to run database and
           AutoCAD as well as other major applications after Chinese modules
           are loaded.

           The UCDOS is weak in printing capability and Hope company seems
           did not pay much attention to upgrade the system. Now, many of the
           memory saving advantages are also available in other pure-software
           system such as CCDOS 2.13.  I have no lates information about
           UCDOS system.

      3.5)  PUC ( Jing Shan ) Chinese System

          This is a cooperation product of Jing Shan ( Golden Moutain, in
          Chinese meaning ) Computer Company of Hong Kong and Technology
          Development Corp of Peking University.

          This is a system similar to UCDOS in papability but better in
          printing and desktop publishing. I have no latest information about
          it.

      3.6) Other Chinese Systems in PRC market

           There are about a dozen of other Chinese system are available in
        market, most of them are not designed as a general purpose operating
        sysetm environemnt for Chinese processing, but rather as input/output
        utilities for a speical application or a group of specific application.
        Among those system are Wang Code 480 ( Developed by Wang Code Computer
        Co.   Mr. YontgMing Wang is the inventor of his famous Wu Bi Zi Xing
        input schem, WBZX is perhaps the most widely used input schem among
        professional typist and secrataries in Chian. ). Another important
        example of this category is the Ju Ren ( Giant ) Chinese System, it is
        good in its desktop publishing function due to a lot of font together
        with its display algorithm is built in on Board Memory. These two
        system can print a good quality Chinese character up to 480x480
        dot without distortion. I have no detailed information on it.
        All these detailed information can be obtained by reading PC World
        (a weekly Chinese newpaper, published by the same company as that of
        PC World in USA )

        I have to mention here that, the most important Chinese Character
        Type setting sytems are developed independ of the Chinese
        Character Operating System such as CCDOS, LXPC, UCDOS, etc. they
        can use any of above systems for input ( in theory ). The
        Hua Guang ( Chinese Light, in Chinese meaning ) System developed by
        Prof. Xuan Wang of Institute of Computer of Peking University is
        the world's state of the art technology in Chinese Type setting,
        They used a patent protected ASIC chip to encode/decode the high
        precision vectorized font.  The latest version run on PC without
        special type setting equipment's support is a system called
        Fang Zheng System.

Summary:

      Legend ( with employee over 500 in 1991 ) is the largest PC manufacturer
      in China and XiaoJun ( with employee over 70 in 1992 )is the largest
      PC Chinese Character software provider in China. The evolution of Chinese
      System in the future will be largerly driven by the competition among
      these two systems in my opinion. Another reason is that both of these
      two companies are using their Chinese Character System as their flag
      ship product. The futures of MS-Window in China is undetermined
      right now, because no serious Chinese Character application system is
      based on the Windows now. A news I'd like to mention here is that
      according to Chicago Chinese TV's recent report, there is now a system
      called Chinese Start now available in PRC that can support full Chinese
      Character Processing with full compatibilty with MS-Windows 3.1. There
      is no need to modify the MS-WIndows to run the Chinese system. It is
      reported that this is a major break through in Chinese Computing. I
      have no direct information and can not comment here.

      This article is a non-technical, brief review of the current status
      of Chinese processing in Mainland China. I will write more technical
      reviews in details about some of above systems in later articles.

      This article is only for the private communication among networkers of
      CCNET and This author assumes no liability to the accuracy of the
      information provided in this article or later articles.