Character amnesia
It is difficult to establish exactly how many different Chinese characters are in use today; the new HSK, a widely used proficiency test for Standard Chinese as a second language, tests over 2,600 different characters, whilst in 1988 the People's Republic of China published the "List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese" which contains 7,000 different characters. In Japan, where a smaller set of characters are in general usage, the Japanese Ministry of Education prescribes the teaching of 2,136 kanji in primary and secondary school in a list called the jōyō kanji, meaning "regular-use Chinese characters".
Simplified Chinese characters
Not all new character forms result in simpler characters (i.e. fewer strokes). For instance, the old form , with 11 strokes, now appears as , with 12 strokes, in the new form. However, technically, these new character forms do not constitute simplified characters.