The International Components for Unicode (ICU) library provides robust and
full-featured Unicode services on a wide variety of platforms. ICU supports
the most current version of the Unicode standard, and provides support for
supplementary characters (needed for GB 18030 repertoire support).

Java provides a very strong foundation for global programs, and IBM and the
ICU team played a key role in providing globalization technology into Sun's
Java. But because of its long release schedule, Java cannot always keep
up-to-date with evolving standards. The ICU team continues to extend Java's
Unicode and internationalization support, focusing on improving
performance, keeping current with the Unicode standard, and providing
richer APIs, while remaining as compatible as possible with the original
Java text and internationalization API design.