I uploaded an article on Chinese cryptography from 1871 to 1945 in Japanese and English. When I wrote about Chinese telegraphic codes in 2014 in Japanese and English, it was commonly believed that there was nothing to discuss about Chinese cryptography during this period. Since then, new light has been shed on this neglected field by materials published in 2014-2018.
Five points I learned from these new materials:
(1) Revisions of Dianxin Xinfa (電信新法) (not to be confused with Dianbao Xinshu (電報新書) or Dianbao Xinbian (電報新編)) were used as official secret codebooks.
(2) Before the "Ming mi" (Plain/Secret) format of a 1908 codebook published by the Commercial Press, a similar format "Mi zhi" was used in official secret codebooks.
(3) There were many versions of official secret codebooks with different ordering of characters. (About the character ordering of the Zhou Code (1900 or 1902), there are conflicting descriptions, and it is desired to re-check the original copy.)
(4) Secret codebooks were used with the conventional (public) codebook (see the examples of "Qing Mi" and "Liang Mi" (1930-1931)).
(5) Official secret codebooks had long used the word dianma (電碼) in the title before 1929.
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