简体中文, 中文, 华文, 汉语, 国语, 华语, 普通话, 汉字, 汉文, 華文, 漢語, 國語, 華語, 普通話, 漢字, 漢文, 中华语文, 中文, 汉语, 普通话, 汉语方言, 语言, 文化, 教育, Chinese, Chinese language, Speak, Writing, Learning Chinese, Chinese Learning

Simplified Chinese characters (simplified Chinese: 简体字; traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: Jiǎntizì) are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo for use in Mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of many standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the People's Republic of China in Mainland China has promoted them for use in printing, since the 1950s and 1960s, in an attempt to increase literacy. They are officially used in the People's Republic of China and Singapore.

Traditional Chinese characters are currently used in the Republic of China (Taiwan), Hong Kong and Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally use traditional characters, but simplified characters are often used among mainland Chinese immigrants.

Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications are based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms. Some characters were simplified by applying regular rules; for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simpler variant. Some characters were simplified irregularly, however, and some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictable from traditional characters. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are thus identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies.

A second round of simplifications was promulgated in 1977, but was later retracted for a variety of reasons. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future. In August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters.

Chinese characters
Scripts
Precursors · Oracle bone script Bronze script · Seal script (large, small) Clerical script · Cursive script Regular script · Semi-cursive script Type styles Imitation Song · Ming · Sans-serif
Properties
Strokes · Stroke order · Radicals Classification · Section headers
Variants
Standards
Kangxi Dictionary (Kyūjitai) Tōyō kanji · Jōyō kanji Standard Form of National Characters List of Forms of Frequently Used Characters Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo
Reform
Japanese script reform Simplified Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters Simplified/traditional debate
Sinoxenic usage
Kanji · Hanja · Hán tự
Homographs
Literary and colloquial readings
Derivatives
Kokuji · Korean hanja · Chữ Nôm Zetian characters · Nü Shu · Idu Kana (Man'yōgana) · Bopomofo · Sawndip Khitan · Jurchen · Tangut