The slogan 战无不胜的毛泽东思想万岁 (Zhàn wúbù shèng de Máo Zédōng sīxiǎng wànsuì; Long live the invincible Mao Zedong Thought) on Xinhua Gate in Beijing
The People's Republic of China, Singapore and Malaysia generally use simplified characters. They appear very sparingly in printed text produced in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities, although they are becoming more prevalent as China opens to the world. Conversely, the mainland is seeing an increase in the use of traditional forms, where they are often used on signs and in logos.
Mainland China
The Law of the People's Republic of China on the National Common Language and Characters implies simplified Chinese as the standard script, and relegates Traditional Chinese to certain aspects and purposes such as ceremonies, cultural purposes (e.g. calligraphy), decoration, publications and books on ancient literature and poetry, and research purposes. Traditional Chinese remains ubiquitous on buildings predating the promotion of simplified characters, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese is also often used for commercial purposes, such as shopfront displays and advertisements, though this is officially discouraged.
The PRC also tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, the PRC prints versions of the People's Daily in traditional characters and both the People's Daily andXinhua websites have versions in traditional characters using Big5 encoding. Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use Traditional characters on their displays and packaging to communicate with consumers (the reverse is true as well). Also, as part of the one country, two systems model, the PRC has not attempted to force Hong Kong or Macau into using simplified characters.
Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters, thereby exposing mainlanders to the use of traditional characters.
Hong Kong
Textbooks, official statements, newspapers, including the PRC-funded media, show no signs of moving to simplified Chinese characters. However simplified Chinese character version of publications are becoming popular, because these mainland editions are often cheaper.
It is common for Hong Kong people to learn traditional Chinese characters in school, and some simplified Chinese in passing (either through reading mainland-published books or other media). For use on computers, however, people tend to type Chinese characters using a traditional character set such as Big5. In Hong Kong, as well as elsewhere, it is common for people who use both sets to do so because it is much easier to convert from the traditional character set to the simplified character set because of the usage of the aforementioned methods 8 and 9 of simplification.
Taiwan
Simplified Chinese characters are not officially used in governmental and civil publications in Taiwan (the Republic of China). However, it is legal to import simplified character publications and distribute them. Certain simplified characters that have long existed in informal writing for centuries also have popular usage, while those characters simplified originally by the Taiwanese government are much less common in daily appearance.
In all areas, most handwritten text will include informal character simplifications (alternative script), and some characters (such as the "Tai" in Taiwan: traditional 臺 simplified/alternative台) have informal simplified forms that appear more commonly than the official forms, even in print. The use of Japanese hiragana character の [no] in place of the more complex 的 [de] is common: both mean "of", despite their unrelated pronunciations. Japanese characters and Chinese simplified characters are not acceptable to use in official documents in the Republic of China.
Singapore and Malaysia
In Singapore, where Chinese is one of the official languages, simplified characters are the official standard and used in all official publications as well as the government-controlled press. While simplified characters are taught exclusively in schools, the government does not officially discourage the use of traditional characters, unlike in the People's Republic of China. While all official publications are in simplified characters, the government still allows parents to choose whether to have their child's Chinese name registered in simplified or traditional characters.
In Malaysia, as simplified characters are taught exclusively in Chinese schools since 1981, most younger Chinese Malaysians are proficient in simplified characters. As Chinese is not an official language in Malaysia, official usage of Chinese, and hence simplified characters, is rare.
As there is no restriction of the use of traditional characters in the mass media, television programmes, books, magazines and music CD's that have been imported from Hong Kong or Taiwan are widely available, and these almost always use traditional characters. Most karaoke discs, being imported from Hong Kong or Taiwan, have song lyrics in traditional characters as well. Many shop signs continue to be written in traditional characters. Menus in hawker centres and coffeeshops are also usually written in traditional characters.
Overseas Chinese
Among overseas Chinese communities (except for Singapore and Malaysia), traditional characters are most commonly used.
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