Why use Unicode?

Unicode has many advantageous functions.

The operating system provides multilingual support. Unicode provides the means to store and retrieve data in the user's national language of choice in a single file, and therefore provides for one database file to support all text needs, regardless of the language of the input device. For example, the same parts file can have Greek, Russian, and English descriptions and names in it.

Unicode allows for the use of combining characters. A combining character is a non-spacing character that is used together with a non-combining character to form a composite character, or glyph. For example, Latin small letter A used with a combining tilde results in A graphical character.

Related concepts
GB18030: The Chinese standard