GBK
| MIME | GBK |
|---|---|
| Alias(es) | CP936, MS936, windows-936, csGBK |
| Standard | GBK 1.0 |
| Language(s) | zh |
| Preceded by | GB2312 |
| Succeeded by | GB 18030 |
GBK is an extension of the GB2312 character set for simplified Chinese characters, used in the People's Republic of China. It includes all unified CJK characters found in GB13000.1-93, i.e. ISO/IEC 10646:1993, or Unicode 1.1. Since its initial release in 1993, GBK has been extended by Microsoft in Code page 936/1386, which was then extended into GBK 1.0. GBK is also the IANA-registered internet name for the Microsoft mapping, which differs from other implementations primarily by the single-byte euro sign at 0x80.
GB abbreviates Guojia Biaozhun, which means national standard in Chinese, while K stands for Extension ("扩展", "Kuozhan"). GBK not only extended the old standard GB2312 with Traditional Chinese characters, but also with Chinese characters that were simplified after the establishment of GB2312 in 1981. With the arrival of GBK, certain names with characters formerly unrepresentable, like the "róng"(镕) character in former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji's name, are now representable. 0.3% of all web pages use GBK in January 2016.
In 1993, the Unicode 1.1 standard was released, including 20,902 characters used in mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea. Following this, China released GB13000.1-93, a national standard (guóbiāo) equivalent of Unicode 1.1.
The GBK character set was defined in 1993 as an extension of GB2312-80, while also including the characters of GB13000.1-93 through the unused codepoints available in GB2312. Hence GBK is backward compatible with GB2312.
Microsoft implemented GBK in Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.51 as Code Page 936. While GBK was never an official standard, widespread usage of Windows 95 led to GBK becoming the de facto standard. While GBK included all the Chinese characters defined in Unicode 1.1 and GB13000.1-93, these standards used different code tables. The primary reason for its existence was simply to bridge the gap between GB2312-80 and GB13000.1-93.
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