The Communist government of China introduced Pinyin in schools in 1958. The international community eventually adopted it as the standard romanization for Chinese writing, as well, with the U.N. doing so in 1986.

Why was Pinyin created?

Pinyin was developed in the 1950s to help improve literacy rates in the newly founded People's Republic of China. Pinyin is a system for romanizing (writing using the Roman/Latin alphabet) the sounds of the Chinese language.

How Pinyin was invented?

The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang and was based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times.