There are two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language: Simplified Chinese characters (简体字) and Traditional Chinese characters (繁体字).
Simplified Chinese characters are the Chinese characters officially simplified by the government of the China in an attempt to promote literacy.
Besides China, simplified Chinese characters are used in Singapore as well as Malaysia. While traditional Chinese characters are used in the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
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.
Example:
Traditional component
Simplified component
Example
見
见
观（觀） 现（現） 觉（覺）
頁
页
顺（順） 颗（顆） 须（須）
貝
贝
贪（貪） 则（則） 财（財）
糹
纟
级（級） 纪（紀） 继（繼）
言
讠
读（讀） 计（計） 说（說）
車
车
辆（輛） 软（軟） 轻（輕）
釒
钅
针（針） 钓（釣） 锡（錫）
長
长
张（張） 涨（漲）
門
门
问（問） 闹（鬧） 闷（悶）
飠
饣
饮（飲） 饥（飢） 饭（飯）
馬
马
驴（驢） 吗（嗎） 妈（媽）
魚
鱼
鲁（魯） 鲤（鯉） 鲨（鯊）
鳥
鸟
鹅（鵝） 鸭（鴨） 鸦（鴉）
Some characters were simplified irregularly, however, and some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictable from traditional characters.
Example: 干(乾), 关(關), 后(後)
Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are thus identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies.
