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The second round of Chinese character simplification was an aborted orthography reform officially promulgated on 20 December 1977 by the People's Republic of China. It was intended to replace the existing (first-round) simplified Chinese characters that were already in use. The complete proposal contained a list of 248 characters that were to be simplified immediately, as well as another list of 605 characters that were open to discussion. Following widespread confusion and opposition, the second round of simplification was officially rescinded on 24 June 1986 by the State Council. Since then, the People's Republic of China has used the first-round simplified characters as its official script. At the same time, the retraction declared that further reform of the Chinese character should henceforth proceed with caution. Today, some second-round simplified characters, while considered nonstandard, continue to survive in informal usage.
History
In 1975, a second round of simplifications was submitted by the Script Reform Committee of China to the State Council for approval. On 20 December 1977, major newspapers such as the People's Daily, the Guangming Daily, the PLA Daily, and official province-level newspapers promulgated the second-round simplifications. The People's Daily began to use the second-round simplified characters on the following day. As early as mid-1978, the Ministry of Education and the Central Propaganda Department were asking publishers of textbooks, newspapers and other works to stop using the second-round simplifications. Second-round simplifications were taught inconsistently in the education system, and people used characters at various stages of official or unofficial simplification. Confusion and disagreement ensued. As a result, the second round of simplifications was retracted by the State Council on 24 June 1986. The State Council's retraction also emphasized that further reform of the Chinese character should henceforth proceed with caution, and that the forms of Chinese characters should be kept stable. On 10 October of the same year, a final list of simplifications was promulgated, which was identical to first-round simplifications promulgated in 1964 except for six changes, and no further change has been made since.
Methods of simplificationThe second round of simplification continued to use the methods used in the first round. For example: In some characters, the phonetic component of the character was replaced with a simpler one, while the radical was unchanged. For example:
In some characters, entire components were replaced by ones that are similar in shape:
In some characters, components that are complicated are replaced with a simpler one not similar in any way:
In some characters, the radical is simply dropped, leaving only the phonetic. This results in mergers between previously distinct characters:
In some characters, entire components are dropped:
Some characters are simply replaced by a similar-sounding one:
EffectsToday, second round characters are officially regarded as incorrect. However, some have survived in informal contexts; this is because many people who were in school between 1977 and 1986 received their education in second-round characters. For example, eggs at markets are often advertised as "鸡旦" rather than "鸡蛋", and parking venues may be marked "仃车" rather than "停车". Another example is handwritten license plates from Hebei and Henan provinces, which often use 丠 and 予 as opposed to 冀 and 豫 to represent those provinces. In one case, the second round has split one family name into two. Originally, the surname 蕭 (Xiāo) was rather common while the surname 肖 (Xiào) was extremely rare, (it is mentioned only sporadically in historical texts). The first round of simplification simplified 蕭 into 萧, while keeping the two characters distinct. The second round, however, merged 萧 into 肖. Despite the retraction of the second round, some people have kept 肖 as their surname, so that there are now two separate surnames, 萧 and 肖. Technical informationMost systems of Chinese character encoding, including Unicode or GB 18030, do not support second-round characters. Mojikyo supports 248 characters on the first list.
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