From Xinhua:
A proposal of the Education Ministry to readjust the font of 44 Chinese characters has triggered controversy in the country on whether the traditional way of writing should be altered.
After eight years of efforts, the Education Ministry unveiled a list of 8,300 standardized Chinese characters in common usage to solicit public opinion 10 days ago in hopes to regulate the way of characters writing.
Ministry officials and some experts said the revisions would only target 44 characters printed in the Song typeface on publications, in other words, the revised characters would only be used by computers and printing machines.
But they soon gave rise to disputes and as the public suddenly found the characters look different from what they used to be, which means they have to change their former way of identifying them.
