Traditional Chinese characters
At the same time, the government of the Republic of China, which had fled to Taiwan, chose not to simplify its writing system. They continue to use traditional Chinese characters, believing that simplified characters were made to take away important details in traditional characters in order to limit thought. The Cantonese-speaking territories of Hong Kong and Macau have also kept using traditional characters, even though they are politically part of the PRC, which uses simplified characters. The Chinese taught as a second language in Southeast Asia uses simplified characters, and the government of Singapore and the Chinese community in Malaysia have adopted simplified characters as their standard script. Many immigrant communities of overseas Chinese also tend to use traditional rather than simplified characters.