Time to return to traditional Chinese characters

Simplified Chinese characters were introduced in the middle of the last century to improve literacy in China. Now that literacy in China has significantly improved, simplified Chinese has served its purpose. It's time to return to traditional Chinese characters.

簡體字己完成它的歷史任務，現在中國人民識字水平甚高，正體字應重被使用。

Simplified Chinese job well done

When the Communist Party took power in China in 1949, literacy in China was low. To raise literacy, the Communist Party introduced simplified Chinese characters. This has worked. Literacy in China is over 95%, according to Wikipedia (accessed 2011.09.22). Economic development has helped. The one-child policy helps too. China produces millions of university graduates every year.

Price to pay: door to Chinese literature partially closed

There is a price to pay in simplying Chinese though. People who study simplified Chinese will not be able to read traditional Chinese. That means their door to the vast amount of traditional Chinese literature is partially closed. One may argue that, gradually, traditional Chinese literature can be translated into simplified Chinese. Unfortunately, some characters in traditional Chinese are represented by the same character in simplified Chinese. When this is the case, differences in these characters are lost. Besides, some Chinese characters are drawings. Some of these drawings are lost through simplification. Therefore, character simplification reduces the population's understanding of traditional literature. Rewriting Shakespeare in modern English will increase the number of people understanding Shakespeare, but something will inevitably be lost in the rewrite.

Time to return to traditional Chinese

The sole purpose of introducing simplified Chinese characters is to raise literacy. This purpose has been achieved. There is no more reason to keep simplified Chinese. The "ease of learning" motivation for simplified Chinese is no longer significant, given the high literacy in the population. The only possible reason for not changing back is "people are used to it already". But people got used to simplified Chinese within 50 years. Now that the nation is much better educated, it can probably get back to traditional Chinese within 5 years. For university entrance exam (Gaokao) candidates, who are well-known for their diligence, it will probably take 3 to 6 months to learn traditional Chinese after it is specified as the official characters for the exams.

This is no political debate

The question of using traditional or simplified Chinese must not be turned into a political debate. For the fact that simplified Chinese is used in mainland China and traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, some might be tempted to turn this into a debate of who the boss should be. The debate should be strictly limited to: which is better for the Chinese culture and heritage, traditional or simplified Chinese? To me, there is overwhelming justification for abandoning the fifty years' temporary measure and going back to the wealth of traditional Chinese.

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