The invention of the telegraph revolutionized communication. In the 19th century, telegraphy swept across the globe, connecting continents in mere minutes and sharing detailed information for anyone willing to take the time to spell out a message. However, China soon found itself largely left out of the process. Its language was not conducive to the communication capabilities of the telegraph.
The answer to this linguistic difference came soon enough in the form of a numerical code, but this code was not created within China itself. Rather, a group of Danish and French men unilaterally created a solution based on arbitrary choices, and Chinese telegraphic communication would be bound to this new order for decades. As a result, China was left paying more just to communicate, and this pricing imbalance was not corrected until the Paris Conference of 1925. Chinaโs experience highlights the importance of decisions such as who gets to design technological standards and what happens when they are made without the consent of the people who will live with them.
Understanding the Telegraph Revolution: The โProblemโ With China
The telegraph is a simple machine. An operator taps out dots and dashes, each configuration representing a letter or number. Given enough time, anyone can spell out words using a telegraph, which are then transmitted to a receiver somewhere else.
This mechanism worked well in the Western world, but in China it posed a serious problem. The Chinese language is made up of tens of thousands of characters, as well as tonal inflections that change meaning, and the same character is not always read the same way. How was a telegraph operator supposed to convey Chinese characters within the limits of the telegraph system?
The lack of an effective solution quickly caused issues for China. Foreign merchants and diplomats were increasingly demanding telegraphic connections to Chinese ports and cities, but they were unable to respond consistently and struggled to find an effective solution. In a highly competitive world, China was being left behind.
To compensate, numerous methods were considered. The first, creating individual telegraphic representations for each Chinese character, was deemed impractical and cumbersome. Attempts to transliterate Chinese into the phonetic alphabet failed on numerous fronts: a lack of a widely accepted romanization system, significant pronunciation differences across dialects, and more. How, then, could this challenge be overcome?
A Western Solution to an Eastern Language
The development of telegraphic communication in China was driven not by the Chinese, but by European companies. They saw China as a nearly unmatched opportunity, and no company was more involved in cashing in than the Danish-owned Great Northern Telegraph Company.
The code originated with a Danish astronomer working for the company and was later refined by a French customs officer in Shanghai, without meaningful input from the Chinese themselves. Their solution mapped Chinese characters onto unique identifiers. For instance, a single character might have been 1037, and another 5556. This required anyone who wanted to send a message to consult a codebook, which converted the characters into their corresponding four-digit numbers.
However, these numbers were largely arbitrary. They solved the functional problem of Chinese telegraph communication, but they contained no connection to meaning or pronunciation. Character 5555 often had no relation to 5556. This turned Chinese less into a living, active language and more into a database long before the invention of computers.
Fixing What Went Wrong
The Chinese method was different from that of Western languages; however, aside from the additional step of using the codebook, what did it matter? Telegraphs cost money to use. Every Chinese telegram required additional labor due to the complications with transcribing individual characters from thousands of number combinations. Additionally, because telegraph networks charged by standardized units catering to the Western alphabet, Chinese messages typically cost more than the same message in a non-Chinese language would have.
By the early twentieth century, China had undergone dramatic change. The Qing dynasty had fallen, and Chinese diplomats increasingly wanted to have a greater voice in international discussions. In Paris in 1925, a Yale-educated Chinese diplomat named Wang Jingchun attended an international conference to argue for change. He rejected the accusation that China was simply trying to game the system for financial advantage.
However, he had to acknowledge that Chinese simply did not work on a plain text (alphabetical) system. Thus, his fight focused on pricing only. After weeks of negotiations, Wang’s efforts paid off; Chinese four-digit codes were deemed equivalent to plain text and would be charged as such.
While Wangโs success was a financial victory, it was also a cultural one. He was able to demonstrate that linguistic inequality can have substantial effects on not just how people understand meaning, but also whether people have access to communication technology in their language at all.
