From Chinese Character Encoding to the AI Frontier

To mark its 60th anniversary, the Computer Society of the Republic of China (CSROC) will hold a special forum on July 17. The event, focusing on the past and future of information technology, will bring together experts including Appier Group outside director Chien Lee-feng and Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-jing for trend analysis and industry dialogue.

Faced with a new landscape shaped by big data and AI, CSROC President and former Minister of Digital Affairs Huang Yen-nun remarks that Taiwan has a strong information technology ecosystem. Industry should seize the opportunity to combine Taiwan’s hardware strengths with AI software in areas such as drones and edge AI, he says, enabling Taiwan to help lead the next wave.

(left) An early Chinese-language computer at National Taiwan University. (MOFA file photo)

(right)  Jin Han III, described as the world’s first portable Chinese-language computer, used Wang Jintu’s radical-based input method. Its internal code, meanwhile, drew on the Xitou Conference interchange code (combining the best features of the accounting and library codes developed by Wang and Hsieh Ching-chun) and conformed to ISO 646 and ISO 2022 standards. It was developed by Jinhongda Computer Company. (MOFA file photo) 

CSROC President Huang Yen-nun suggests that Taiwan can combine its hardware strengths with AI software to help set the pace of global technological development. 

The battle to make computers work in Chinese

Back in the 1960s, at a time when only a handful of institutions had access to computers, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, government data-processing authorities, and academic pioneers established CSROC in June 1966. The society provided an important academic platform as Taiwan entered the computer age.

Former CSROC President Wan Zhen’ou says the society’s greatest early contribution was promoting and localizing computer use, with Chinese-language computing at the heart of that effort.

Computers at the time operated entirely in English. To bring them into wider use across Taiwanese industry and the public sector—including Taiwan Power Company and government tax-processing centers—developers had to make them work in Chinese. Competing keyboard layouts, speech recognition, and input methods such as Cangjie and Dayi proliferated, while typefaces and character codes became especially contentious.

In the effort to assign a machine-readable code to every Chinese character, two broad camps emerged: One was led by telecommunications specialists and scholars at National Chiao Tung University, while the other was rooted in library systems and a comprehensive Chinese-character database. They clashed over how to establish a standard code.

“Both sides had their reasons,” Wan Zhen’ou recalls. At this critical moment, CSROC’s neutral position enabled it to play an important coordinating role. By allowing all stakeholders to have their say at academic conferences, the society helped build consensus around a “Standard Interchange Code for Generally Used Chinese Characters,” an important precursor to today’s CNS 11643 standard.

According to the society’s website, CSROC selected experts in 1980 to take part in government-led work on a standard interchange code for Chinese-language information, an important step in the Sinification and localization of computing.

Researchers at the Industrial Technology Research Institute test an input system and related software during Chinese-language computer development. (MOFA file photo) 

Standardizing the language of computing

Early on, government agencies and state-owned enterprises imported different computer systems, each with its own terminology. The same command or component could have entirely different names at universities and public enterprises across Taiwan. One of CSROC’s early tasks was therefore to standardize Chinese computing terms, technical language, and symbols.

According to the society’s website, a working group formed in 1981 spent two years compiling bilingual computing terminology. For example, it standardized “program” as chengshi [程式] (rather than chengxu [程序] or biancheng [編程]), and “memory” as jiyiti [記憶體]. The Ministry of Education approved and announced the terminology in 1983. Without this unified vocabulary, computer textbooks and public computer education would have faced major obstacles.

A National Taiwan University student tests a Chinese-language computer. (MOFA file photo) 

Some key events in the history of CSROC

According to CSROC’s website, the society launched Diannao Jikan (Computer Quarterly) soon after its founding; the publication was later renamed Journal of Computers. Now issued bimonthly, it publishes Taiwanese and international research in areas including artificial intelligence, automation control, cloud computing, and cybersecurity applications such as phishing detection.

With the arrival of the internet age, children increasingly have begun using computers from an early age. Here, young students take part in a computer lesson. (MOFA file photo)

Honoring Taiwan’s computing pioneers

Reflecting the strength of Taiwan’s information technology sector, CSROC established its Fellow designation in 2013 to honor leaders who have made outstanding contributions to Taiwan’s academic and industrial computing communities.

Past honorees from industry include Acer co-founder Stan Shih; PChome founder Jan Hung-tze, who helped usher Taiwan into the era of e-commerce; Syscom Chairman Liu Jui-fu; and Tung Tzu-hsien, an ASUS co-founder and chairman of Pegatron. Other Fellows include former Minister of Education Ovid Tzeng, known for his long-standing efforts in popular science, and former Premier Simon Chang, who helped build Taiwan’s high-performance computing infrastructure.

The society’s Fellows also include a number of individuals selected to be IEEE Fellows: former National Tsing Hua University President C. L. Liu (Liu Chung-Laung), author of several influential computer science textbooks; former National Chi Nan University President Chang Chin-fu; Lee Der-tsai, who served as president of National Chung Hsing University and director of Academia Sinica’s Institute of Information Science; and Professor Chang Chin-chen, often described as the “father of cryptography in Taiwan.” Their contributions across different fields have strengthened Taiwan’s reputation in technology development.

Acer general manager Stan Shih (right) explains the company’s newly released “fourth-generation Chinese computer.” (MOFA file photo)

Intelligence and resilience in a new era

The world is entering a period of rapid change shaped by generative AI and the need for digital resilience across the internet. Huang Yen-nun, who also serves as executive director of Academia Sinica’s Cybersecurity Center, points to information security as one example. AI has made intrusions and fraud more serious, for example by allowing phishing emails to be generated quickly and convincingly. At the same time, AI-enabled security tools can help stop attacks and identify vulnerabilities that people previously missed. The contest remains a game of cat and mouse, however, with both sides continuing to evolve.

Huang says CSROC will continue working at the technological frontier, supporting collaboration among industry, government, academia, and researchers to promote Taiwan’s status as a global technology hub.

A tablet computer. (MOFA file photo)

Milestones in Taiwan’s information technology development

Notebook computers. (MOFA file photo)