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- Simplified Chinese Characters are one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. They are based mostly on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms that were used in printed text for over a thousand years. The government of the People's Republic of China has promoted them for use in printing in an attempt to increase literacy. They are officially used in the People's Republic of China, Singapore, and the United Nations. Traditional Chinese is currently used in the Republic of China or Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally use traditional characters, but simplified characters are often used among mainland Chinese immigrants. However, the majority of the Chinese-speaking world uses simplified characters. Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some characters were simplified by applying regular rules; for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simpler variant. Some characters were simplified irregularly, however, and some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictable from traditional characters. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are thus identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. In August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters.
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