GB 2312

GB 2312 (also known as Guobiao 2312, formally designated as GB/T 2312-1980) is a character encoding standard used for simplified Chinese characters in mainland China. It was introduced in 1980 and superseded the older GB 6345.1-80 and GB 6345.2-80 standards.

GB 2312 is a simplified Chinese encoding standard with a focus on accommodating characters commonly used in daily life and basic publications. It encompasses a collection of 6,763 simplified Chinese characters, as well as 682 non-Chinese graphic characters including punctuation marks, numerals, Latin letters, Greek letters, Japanese kana, and Cyrillic letters.

The encoding uses a two-byte system, providing a theoretical capacity of 94x94 = 8836 code points. The actual implementation divides the code space into 94 "zones" (区) and 94 "positions" (位) within each zone. Characters are referenced using their zone and position numbers. For instance, the character '啊' is located in Zone 16, Position 01.

GB 2312 is largely superseded by newer, more comprehensive character encodings such as GBK and GB 18030, which are backwards compatible with GB 2312 but include a wider range of characters to support the ongoing evolution of the Chinese language and wider international compatibility. While still found in older systems and documents, its usage is declining in favor of these more modern encodings.