Phonetic Alphabet) was developed in 1892 by Lu Zhuangzhang (1854–1928). It was used to write the sounds of the Xiamen dialect of Southern Min. Some people also invented other phoneme systems. Gwoyeu Romatzyh In 1923, the Kuomintang Ministry of Education instituted a National Language Unification Commission which, in turn, formed an eleven-member romanization unit. The political circumstances of the time prevented any positive outcome from the formation of this unit. A new voluntary working subcommittee was independently formed by a group of five scholars who strongly advocated romanization. The committee, which met twenty-two times over a twelve-month period (1925–1926), consisted of Zhao Yuanren, Lin Yutang, Qian Xuantong, Li Jinxi (), and one Wang Yi. They developed the Gwoyeu Romatzyh () system, proclaimed on 26 September 1928. The most distinctive aspect of this new system was that, rather than relying upon marks or numbers, it indicated the tonal variations of the "root syllable" by a systematic variation within the spelling of the syllable itself. The entire system could be written with a standard QWERTY keyboard. Despite the fact that it was created to eventually replace Chinese characters, and that it was constructed by linguists, Gwoyeu Romatzyh was never extensively used for any purpose other than delivering the pronunciation of specific Chinese characters in dictionaries. The complexity of its tonal system was such that it was never popular. Latinxua Sinwenz The work towards constructing the Latinxua Sinwenz () system began in Moscow as early as 1928, when the Soviet Scientific Research Institute on China sought to create a means through which the large Chinese population living in the Far East of the Soviet Union could be made literate, facilitating their further education. From the very outset, it was intended that the Latinxua Sinwenz system, once established, would supersede the Chinese characters. It was decided to use the Latin alphabet because it was thought to serve their purpose better than the Cyrillic alphabet. Unlike Gwoyeu Romatzyh, with its complex method of indicating tones, Latinxua Sinwenz system does not indicate tones at all, and since it is not Mandarin-specific, it can be used for other Chinese varieties. The eminent Moscow-based Chinese scholar Qu Qiubai (1899–1935) and the Russian linguist V.S. Kolokolov (1896–1979) devised a prototype romanization system in 1929. In 1931 a coordinated effort between the Soviet sinologists Alekseev B.M., Dragunov A.A. and Shprintsin A.G., and the Moscow-based Chinese scholars Qu Qiubai, Wu Yuzhang,