During the Republic of China, scholars represented by Lu Xun vigorously promoted the reform of Chinese characters, and their main appeal was Latin Chinese characters; Although this is to let Chinese characters be learned by more people in a short period of time, it is easier to be in line with international standards, but this practice of completely abandoning Chinese characters is somewhat extreme.
After the founding of New China, besides seizing the time to restore people's livelihood and economy, how to strengthen people's culture, strengthen basic education and improve people's comprehensive quality is also a top priority. Under the leadership of relevant departments, experts decided to simplify Chinese characters in an all-round way.
This kind of Chinese character is different from the Chinese character reform advocated by Lu Xun and others at that time. It is simplified on the basis of retaining the original' glyph expression' of Chinese characters, making it easier to learn Chinese characters. The new simplified Chinese characters not only greatly reduce the cost of learning and using Chinese characters, but also retain a series of advantages of Chinese characters.
In the summary of simplified words published by the state in 1965, 2236 simplified words (1 simplified word) were included in the * * * plan. These simplified characters are not only easy to popularize in primary and secondary schools across the country, but also highly accepted by adults in rural areas. The illiteracy rate in China has been greatly reduced, which shows the advantages of simplified characters.
Due to the government's vigorous promotion, simplified Chinese characters are rapidly popularized in Chinese mainland. Unfortunately, friends from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan continue to use traditional Chinese characters for various historical reasons. Interestingly, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan don't use simplified characters, while Malaysia and Singapore, where Chinese live in compact communities, spontaneously start to simplify characters. Why? We continue to look down.
While Chinese mainland is vigorously promoting the simplification of Chinese characters, Hong Kong and Macao are still occupied by western powers. Most of the local population is from China, but how can those in power care about their education? The government has no incentive to promote simplified characters at all. After China's return to the motherland, it has become a habit for local residents to use traditional Chinese characters, so it is unnecessary to promote simplified Chinese characters.
The situation in Taiwan Province Province is a bit special. They originally intended to promote simplified Chinese characters, but after seeing that the mainland had taken the lead in simplifying Chinese characters, they immediately gave up the idea of using simplified Chinese characters in the spirit of' what you do, I want to do the opposite with you'.
Not only that, they also strictly ordered local residents to use traditional Chinese characters, and regularly sent staff to patrol the streets. Once anyone uses simplified Chinese characters, they will be arrested immediately. Although the requirements for simplified Chinese characters in Taiwan Province Province are not as strict as before, people in Taiwan Province Province have also formed the habit of using traditional Chinese characters.
Then why do Malaysia and Singapore use simplified Chinese characters? There are two similarities between the two countries. First, there are many people in China, but they are close to Chinese mainland and will have contacts in all aspects.
Malaysia is a country with Malays as its main population, but there are a large number of Chinese there. Thanks to the efforts of Chinese elites, the local government in Malaysia is not strict in the management of Chinese characters. Later, for a series of purposes such as convenient management and attracting talents, the Malay government began to actively promote simplified word summarization among Chinese.
In Singapore, the total population of Chinese is as high as 75%, so Chinese naturally becomes one of the local official languages.
However, although there are many Chinese in Singapore, and most of them are from coastal areas, they are not from the same place. You know, there are many Minnan dialects, and you may not understand them just by crossing a mountain. So Chinese in Singapore may not understand each other.
In order to facilitate management, the Singapore government followed China's example, requiring Chinese people all over the country to speak Mandarin as much as possible, and directly copied and pasted the simplified word list promulgated by China and extended it to Singapore. After years of hard work, Chinese in Singapore can basically speak fluent Mandarin, and simplified characters have become the local common language.
In fact, there is no difference between traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters. While vigorously promoting simplified characters, traditional characters should not be completely forgotten. Because traditional Chinese characters are also a part of our Chinese civilization, many ancient China classics are written in traditional Chinese characters, which are more ornamental than simplified Chinese characters in calligraphy. We need to correctly view the application of simplified characters and traditional characters in different situations.