I have a simple demo, I have create a table which contains 3 rows and they all have a column named"CNAME" to display their Chinese name. And for column ENAME, it displays their Chines name in pinyin.

The result in sql trace shows that the Chinese name will be transfer to Hexadecimal character when they are stored in the system and the compare are in fact in these Hexadecimal character:

cursor_140298224832512_c136.execute(’’’ select * from TEST_SORT ORDER BY CNAME desc ‘’’)

Therefore, 爱活力 will be bigger than 山东 and 华为.

If you want to sort the Chinese character as you expected, I think the most convenient way is to add a column that display the Chinese name in pinyin and sort in that column.