The simplification of Chinese characters, as a matter of fact, is accompanied by a history of Chinese characters, has never stopped. This process is characterized by convention, which is to say, it is gradually formed and established in the long history practice. In modern times, due to the rise of national democratic revolution and growing requirements call for simplifying Chinese characters, a kind of social trend was formed.

The first person who proposed the use of simplified Chinese characters is the educator Lu Guikui who published a paper named “general education should use characters in popular form” in the journal of education in the year of 1909. It is an interesting thing for the students who study Chinese to know the history of the simplification of Chinese characters. When it came to the May 4th Movement, the one who made great contribution to the Chinese characters simplification was the scholar Qian Xuantong.

Cooperated with Lu Ji, Li Jinxi and YangShuda, Qian put forward the proposition of reducing the strokes of Chinese characters being used at that time, proposing to apply the simplified characters popular in the folk to all forms of formal and written Chinese. After this proposal was approved, it produced strong reaction in the community. In 1932, the Ministry of Education at that time published the book indicating the commonly used Chinese characters. Two years later, Qian Xuantong presided over the draft of the simplified characters, collecting 2400 Chinese characters.

When it came to 1935, the Ministry of Culture in Nanjing published the first simplified Chinese characters table which is a significant thing in the history of education in China. in that period, the tables such as the simplified characters dictionary, commonly used characters table and simplified characters table were continuously published. If you attend to HSK preparation program in China, teachers may tell you that the work of simplifying Chinese characters attracted much attention of the government and stepped into a new stage with organized collection and collocation and implementation.

In 1950, the Ministry of Education of the Central People‘s Government formed a registration of common simplified characters. One year later, Chinese character Reform Committee drafted the first group of simplified Chinese characters, collecting 555 characters. It was the year of 1964 that the general table of simplified characters was published with 2261 complex characters and 2235 simplified characters. Until then, Chinese character simplification campaign of more than half a century achieved tangible results.