The simplification movement is thought of as a reform of the Chinese Communists, launched mainly in the 1950’s, and without a doubt it was. However, some simplified forms go back to the Qin Dynasty in 200 BCE. Earlier 20th century reform efforts arose, largely in connection with teaching children how to write. In the “May Fourth Movement” of 1919, anti-imperialist Chinese nationalists, unhappy at the result of the Versailles Treaty, dominated by Western interests and Japan, made many demands, including a change in the writing system. The alleged that the old approach was preventing China’s modernization. A contemporary Chinese author, Lu Xun was oft quoted when he said that “if Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China dies.” Simplification efforts continued under the Kuomintang throughout the thirties and forties, and an initial set of simplification principles came to be announced, but they did not take hold.

In 1956, the PRC government promulgated the first set of simplifications, followed by a second version of the “First Round” document in 1964. The Cultural Revolution brought about additional pressure for change, modernization, and rejection of the past. The “Second Round” of Simplified Characters was announced in 1977, but it did not catch on. The combination of the counter-reform against the Cultural Revolution and the death of Chairman Mao led eventually to a retraction of the “Second Round” in 1986 and the substitution of a “final list,” which is identical to the 1964 list with minor exceptions. A few school children learned Second Round in school only to have it revoked a decade later, and occasionally “Second Round” characters pop up in informal writing by these people.

The 1986 document, the "Complete List of Simplified Characters," consists of a number of charts, and an appendix. Chart 1 is a list of 350 characters whose simplification can not be applied to any others. They are sui generis. Chart 2 is a list of 132 simple characters and 14 simplified radicals that are designed to affect all other characters of which they are a part. Chart 3 is an illustrative (but not exhaustive) list of 1,753 characters in which the reforms in Chart 2 have been applied. The appendix abolishes 39 complex characters that already had simpler, acceptable variants. It also renames 35 places, getting rid of very rare characters that were virtually out of use.

A similar publication, the "Series One Organization List of Variant Characters" of 1993 casts off 1,027 older variants of characters and establishes their variant forms as “official.”

Singapore and Malaysia, two countries that also use Chinese characters as an official language, have adopted the simplifications of the Peoples’ Republic of China. Singapore’s simplification came in two rounds. The first was in 1969 (affecting 502 traditional characters), and the second was completed in 1974 (affecting 2,287 characters). Two years later a few dozen differences from China’s reform were removed, and in 1993 Singapore adopted the 1986 list of the Peoples’ Republic of China. Malaysia simplified in 1981, in accordance with the 1964 second document of China’s “First Round.”