What does the term "Chinese romanization" mean?

The term "romanization" refers to the rendering of Chinese words and names in the Latin (or 'Roman') alphabet. This technique of rendering non-alphabetical writing systems such as Chinese was created by Catholic missionaries (among others) beginning in the 16th century as they traveled throughout the world and were faced with the challenge of writing down the various languages they encountered in their work. For Chinese, this has taken various forms, but has boiled down to two main systems of romanization still in use today. 

The first system, established in the 19th century, is the so-called Wade-Giles system, named after two British scholars (Thomas Wade and Lionel Giles) who separately devised methods of writing Chinese words with the Latin alphabet. In this system, the word for "China" is rendered as 'Chung-kuo,' and the word for "The Way" is rendered as 'Tao.'

The second system, established by Chinese scholars in the early 20th century is the Pinyin system ('Pinyin' means "lined-up sounds"). This is the system which is now an ISO standard used on the internet and in most publications worldwide, and is now the preferred method of rendering Chinese words and names in the Latin alphabet. In Pinyin, the word for "China" is rendered as 'Zhongguo' and the word for "The Way" is rendered as 'Dao.'

Students of Chinese thought and culture must come to terms with at least one, preferably both, systems if they are to make sense out of the many new terms to be encountered in their reading.