simplified china characters

Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. The other set is Traditional Chinese characters. Simplified Chinese characters are the Chinese characters officially simplified by the government of the People's Republic of China in an attempt to promote literacy. This character set is used for most printing in Mainland China and Singapore whereas traditional characters are used in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.

There is the potential for confusion due to the fact that there are many examples of Chinese characters which are simplified, but which are not referred to as jianti zi in Chinese. This includes character simplifications which universally are used in Chinese cursive handwriting, and a number of character simplifications which exist separate from the character sets promulgated by the PRC government. An example is the Tai (台) in Taiwan(台灣), which is rarely seen in its formal form (臺). Sometimes in a traditional-character context, simplified characters can still be seen, such as the characters 只 and 谷, the simplified forms of 隻 and 穀 respectively. Sometimes people even are not conscious of that they are using simplified characters, for instance, the character 岩, the formal form of which (巖) is not even known by many people.

In addition, there are character simplifications which exist in Hanzi used in Korean, Japanese, and in non-Mandarin communities. While these all are technically simplified characters and are occasionally referred to as such in English, the Chinese term jianti zi is never used in refer to these simplifications.

Although it doesn't refer explicitly to simplified characters, the Chinese words guifan hanzi (规范汉字), meaning "standardized Chinese characters", mainly refer to simplified characters. Guifan hanzi as a term appears in the PRC Constitution, for example.

Chinese characters in use before this simplification are generally called traditional Chinese characters and remain in widespread use.