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".
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.