Los caracteres chinos simplificados (chino simplificado: 简体中文, chino tradicional: 簡體中文, pinyin: jiǎntǐ zhōngwén o hans según ISO lggdj15924) son el conjunto de caracteres de escritura del idioma chino resultante del proceso de simplificación de los caracteres chinos llevado a cabo por el gobierno de la República Popular China en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. El proceso de simplificación consistió básicamente en eliminar trazos y sustituir las formas de aquellos caracteres tradicionales que tienen una escritura especialmente complicada por otras más sencillas. Algunos caracteres fueron simplificados aplicando ciertas reglas; por ejemplo, sustituyendo ciertos radicales (subdivisión regular de un carácter) por una variante más simple. Otros caracteres fueron simplificados de forma arbitraria, de manera que son muy diferentes e imposibles de deducir a partir del carácter tradicional. Finalmente, muchos caracteres (en general los que tienen relativamente pocos trazos) no fueron simplificados, de manera que se escriben idénticamente tanto en escritura simplificada como en escritura tradicional. A partir del proceso de simplificación existen dos sistemas de escritura estándar para el chino: mientras que en la China continental se utiliza el chino simplificado, el chino tradicional continúa utilizándose en Taiwán, Hong Kong y Macao. Los caracteres simplificados se conocen como "jiǎntǐzì" (en chino tradicional: 簡體字, chino simplificado: 简体字), que significa «caracteres de forma simple». También se los llama "jiǎnhuàzì", aunque es menos frecuente (en chino tradicional: 簡化字, chino simplificado: 简化字: «caracteres simplificados»).

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Simplified Chinese characters (简化字; jiǎnhuàzì) are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the People's Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy. They are officially used in the People's Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are currently used in Hong Kong, Macau, and the Republic of China (Taiwan). While traditional characters can still be read and understood by many mainland Chinese and the Chinese community in Malaysia and Singapore, these groups generally retain their use of Simplified characters. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters. Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially (简体字; ). Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character "structure" or "body", character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, more complicated forms. On the other hand, the official name refers to the modern systematically simplified character set, that (as stated by Mao Zedong in 1952) includes not only structural simplification but also substantial reduction in the total number of standardized Chinese characters. Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms. Some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the same pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character, usually the simplest amongst all variants in form. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are thus identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters, especially in those where a component is replaced by an arbitrary simple symbol. This often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the 'overall process' of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few and internally consistent. On the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. A second round of simplifications was promulgated in 1977, but was later retracted in 1986 for a variety of reasons, but largely due to the confusion by and the unpopularity of the second round simplifications. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future. In August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 (simplified and unchanged) characters was promulgated by the State Council of the People's Republic of China on June 5, 2013.

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