zhCN

zh-CN refers to the Chinese language as used in Mainland China, represented in computing by the locale code zh-CN. The "zh" stands for Chinese, and "CN" is the ISO country code for China. In IETF language tagging, zh-CN is typically interpreted as zh-Hans-CN, indicating the Simplified Han script used in Mainland China. The variant zh-CN is often written without a dash as zhCN or zh_CN in various software ecosystems. This tag contrasts with zh-TW (Taiwan, Traditional Chinese) and zh-HK (Hong Kong, Traditional Chinese).

Historically, Mainland China adopted Simplified Chinese characters from the 1950s onward, leading to standards such as GB2312, GBK, and GB18030. In modern software and on the web, the Unicode standard (UTF-8) is commonly used, though legacy encodings may still appear in older systems.

Locale settings labeled zh-CN influence not only character form but also locale-specific conventions for dates, times, numbers, and sorting, aligning with Mainland Chinese norms. Localization efforts may provide separate resources for zh-CN and zh-CN-Hans, and developers may also use zh-Hans-CN to emphasize the script.

Related identifiers include zh-Hans-CN, zh-Hant-CN, zh-TW, and zh-SG, reflecting the broader set of Chinese-language locales. See also language tagging and locale catalogs for Chinese-language variants.