When did China change from traditional Chinese characters to simplified Chinese characters?

Manchu's policy of restoring ancient ways in writing caused a peculiar phenomenon in Qing Dynasty, that is, the separation of printed fonts ("regular characters") and handwritten fonts ("vulgar characters") of Chinese characters, which caused great obstacles to cultural popularization. Therefore, after the Revolution of 1911 overthrew the Qing government, Chinese scholars immediately began to sort out fonts. At the beginning of 1935, Chinese workers in Shanghai organized a "meeting to promote Chinese characters at hand" and officially started the promotion of simplified Chinese characters. In their manifesto, the Promotion Association first pointed out that the writing policy of the Qing Dynasty caused the font differentiation of Chinese characters, resulting in the result that "to recognize a word, you have to recognize more than two forms". Therefore, "we advocate the use of hand-written characters in printing, which saves the trouble of memorizing several fonts by scholars, making the characters easier to recognize and write, and more popular to the public." More than 3 handwritten Chinese characters were selected for publication at the promotion meeting, which was immediately responded by the publishing industry. Simplified Chinese characters soon appeared in many newspapers and magazines, forming the climax of the first simplified Chinese characters in modern China.

In August 1935, the Ministry of Education of the Kuomintang government officially published the "First List of Simplified Chinese Characters", which included 324 simplified Chinese characters, which was roughly the same as the list of simplified Chinese characters selected by the previous promotion meeting. However, only half a year later, in February 1936, the Kuomintang government made a U-turn on this issue and issued an order of "no implementation". On the surface, the reason is that the simplification of Chinese characters "destroys China culture", but the fundamental reason is that the active promoters of simplified characters are mostly left-wingers. Chiang Kai-shek believes that the implementation of simplified characters is equal to helping the * * * production party to publicize. Since then, simplified Chinese characters have disappeared from the Kuomintang-ruled areas. If books with simplified Chinese characters are found, they will be regarded as "* * * party members" and brutally persecuted. This influence has been spread in Taiwan Province until now, but the simplified characters have changed from the "symbol of the Party" in those days to the "symbol of China" today. The policy of writing in the Manchu Dynasty was inherited by Taiwan independence elements and became their tool to split China.

Although simplified characters disappeared in the Kuomintang-ruled areas because of the opposition of the Kuomintang government, they were popularized in the liberated areas. During the period of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, a large-scale literacy campaign was carried out in the liberated areas, and the easy-to-write and easy-to-recognize folk characters were popularized on a large scale. Just as some scholars said at that time (in the early 195s), when you go to the countryside, there are simplified characters (that is, vulgar characters) on every slogan and notice. The number and scope of the use of vulgar characters have greatly exceeded the retro regular characters that have been used since the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China. In this case, it is extremely necessary to "correct the name" of vulgar characters. It is on this basis that the China Character Reform Commission worked out the Simplified Chinese Character Summary by sorting out and standardizing a large number of vulgar characters, which was promulgated in 1956. The promulgation of "Simplified Chinese Character Summary Table" indicates that Chinese characters have finally got rid of the shackles of the retro policy of Manchu characters, and the movement of vulgar characters that lasted for hundreds of years has finally won a decisive victory!