History of education
Although there are more than 40,000 Chinese characters in written Chinese, many are rarely used. Studies have shown that full literacy in the Chinese language requires a knowledge of only between three and four thousand characters.
List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters
The List of Graphemes of Commonly-used Chinese Characters () is a list of 4762 commonly used Chinese characters and their standardized forms prescribed by the Hong Kong Education Bureau to be taught in primary and Middle schools in Hong Kong. The list was last updated in 2007, included as an appendix to the "Hong Kong Chinese Lexical Lists for Primary Learning" (). In 2012, the list was published as a hardcover book, with Cantonese and Putonghua pronunciations and simple English explanations for every character.