Hanyu Pinyin (Hànyǔ Pīnyīn) is the official Chinese phonetic Latinization scheme for Chinese characters issued by the People's Republic of China (PRC). It was developed by the Hanyu Pinyin Scheme Committee of the former China Script Reform Commission (now the State Language and Literature Working Committee) during the 1955-1957 script reform. It was developed by the Hanyu Pinyin Program Committee of the former Chinese Character Reform Commission (now the State Language and Writing Commission) during the 1955-1957 script reform. The pinyin scheme is mainly used for the notation of Mandarin Chinese pronunciation, as a kind of Mandarin phonetic symbol for Chinese characters.The National People's Congress approved the publication of the scheme on February 11, 1958.In 1982, it became the international standard ISO7098 (Chinese Roman alphabet spelling). Some overseas Chinese regions, such as Singapore, have adopted hanyu pinyin in Chinese language teaching, and in September 2008, Taiwan, China, changed its policy on Chinese transliteration from "tongyong pinyin" to "hanyu pinyin", which requires the use of hanyu pinyin for all English translations of Chinese. In September 2008, Taiwan, China changed its policy on Chinese transliteration from "tongyong pinyin" to "hanyu pinyin", requiring the use of hanyu pinyin for all English translations of Chinese characters, which will be enforced from 2009.