Ma suggests learning simplified Chinese characters

Ma said he hopes his proposal of "recognizing traditional Chinese characters but also knowing simplified" will be put on the agenda of discussions between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Ma made the remarks at the Presidential Office in a meeting with a group of overseas Chinese who live in the United States.

Traditional Chinese characters and the simplified version are two standard sets of printed Chinese characters, with the traditional used in Taiwan as the official written language, while China uses the simplified characters it introduced in the 1950s in an effort to reduce illiteracy among rural Chinese.

Ma said he has spared no efforts to promote the use of traditional Chinese characters over the years and pointed out that the system is essential for people who want to read books written in China 2,000 or 3,000 years ago.

"There are few cultures in the world apart from Chinese whose writing systems have remained viable throughout so many different eras, " he said, underlining the importance of preserving the traditional system of writing Chinese characters.

Ma said that in many Chinese schools overseas, they teach students from Taiwan traditional characters, but lecture students from China using simplified.

He said it is a pity that those who only know simplified characters cannot read words in traditional characters, while people taught using traditional characters can quite easily read simplified.

Therefore, he proposed that traditional characters should be used in printing as much as possible to allow the Chinese canon to remain linked to tradition Chinese culture.

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