Who proposed the simplification of Chinese characters?

The simplification of Chinese characters was jointly issued by the Chinese Character Reform Commission and the Ministry of Education, not by anyone.

Simplification of Chinese characters was one of the three major tasks of the Chinese Character Reform. on January 7, 1955, the Chinese Character Reform Committee and the Ministry of Education jointly issued the "Simplification of Chinese Characters (Draft)". on January 28, 1956, the State Council adopted and published the "Simplification of Chinese Characters". on February 1, it was announced that 1,055 variant Chinese characters were to be abolished.

In 1964, the Chinese Character Reform Commission published the Summary Table of Simplified Characters. There were 2238 simplified characters*** and 14 simplified radicals in the list.

On December 20, 1977, the State Council approved the publication of the Second Simplified Chinese Character Program (Draft), which was once on trial. Due to the fact that the public had more opinions about the program, it was soon discontinued. in November 1981, the work of revising and improving the said program began. After being finalized and published by the State Council, it was accepted by the masses. At this point, the simplification of Chinese characters was basically completed.

Expanded information:

In the 1950s, when a new China was just being born, the reform of Chinese characters was on the agenda. "The whole world is going to realize ****productivism by moving from New Democracy to socialism, and the language and writing of all mankind is going to realize ****same Esperanto by moving from a unified national language to a regional language!" Stalin's words had assigned a direction to China's script reform.

Under the guidance of Mao Zedong's spirit of "not divorcing ourselves from reality and cutting off history," a vigorous campaign to reform Chinese characters was launched. At the time, the reform of language and writing centered on three main tasks: simplifying and organizing Chinese characters, promoting Mandarin, and formulating and implementing the Hanyu Pinyin program.

In 1951, the Chinese Character Reform Research Committee (later reorganized as the Chinese Character Reform Committee, hereinafter referred to as the Literature Reform Committee) was formally established.

In the "Report of the Cultural Reform Committee and the Ministry of Education to the Central Committee of the People's Republic of China", the direction of the reform of Chinese characters was clearly stated, "The reform of Chinese characters should follow the same direction of pinyin as that of the world's scripts***, and before pinyinization is realized, the Chinese characters must be simplified in order to facilitate the present application, and at the same time, the preparatory work of pinyinization must be actively carried out".

Soon after, the Cultural Reform Commission published the Draft Plan for Simplification of Chinese Characters and widely solicited opinions from the society. According to some sources, about 200,000 national litterateurs, language teachers in schools in all provinces and cities, as well as clerical workers in the army and labor unions, participated in the discussions at the time.

After being validated by the State Council's Chinese Character Simplification Program Validation Committee and discussed at the National Conference on Character Reform, it was formally amended into the Chinese Character Simplification Program for the State Council's review and was formally implemented in 1956. The entire program*** included 515 simplified characters and 54 simplified radicals, and was implemented in four batches from 1956 to 1958.

In 1964, after adjusting the problems in the Simplified Chinese Characters Program, the Cultural Reform Commission compiled and printed the General List of Simplified Characters, which included ***2238 simplified characters as the norms for the use of simplified characters.

After the simplification of Chinese characters, the number of strokes is reduced and the structure is clear, making it easy to teach literacy. It is true that, as Zhou Enlai said in his report on "Current Characters of Word Reform," "In the two years since the program was announced, the simplified characters have been commonly used in newspapers, journals, textbooks, and books in general, and have been welcomed by the general public, who claim that the simplicity of the program has indeed done a great deal of good, especially for children and adults who are new to learning the script."

And added: "Simplified characters are better to learn and write than traditional ones, so it is only natural that the general public, including workers, peasants, elementary school students and teachers, warmly welcome them."

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