Traditional Chinese characters
The older, "traditional" forms of Chinese characters remained more or less the same (although there were a few changes now and then) until the People's Republic of China (PRC) was formed in 1949. At that time, the Communist Party of China (CPC) started to create simplified Chinese characters, in which anywhere between 20-30% of all the Chinese characters used in daily life were replaced by ones that had fewer strokes and were easier to write. This move by the CPC, which took place in the 1950s throughout Mainland China, was made in order to make education more available to common people, especially farmers.