Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou has proposed that Taiwan adopt the simplified character set used on the Chinese mainland.

"We hope the two sides can reach a consensus on （learning to） read standard characters while writing in the simplified ones," he said in a statement on July 8.

Ma’s suggestion was discussed at the Cross-Straits Economic, Trade and Cultural Forum last weekend in Changsha, capital of Hunan province. Ma also proposed that scholars from across the Straits should compile a dictionary with both simplified and traditional Chinese characters.

Since 1949, Taiwan has used traditional characters, fanti zi, however after the founding of New China, a simplification program of characters was carried out across the mainland to increase literacy.

Even so, making characters easier to write and read began a century before, during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period.

Between 1851-64, this political entity, founded by peasants, used more than 100 simplified Chinese characters in its official documents. Most of these jianhua zi were later included in the official Simplified Chinese Character Set.

Simplified Chinese characters （jianhua zi or jianti zi） today play a predominant role in official documents, in the educational sector and mass media, while fanti zi, or traditional characters, have been relegated to a small number of academic publications that contain ancient texts.

The pinyin phonetic system, which uses Roman characters, was also designed in the 1950s and widely introduced.

For a long time, jianhua zi was considered a transitional form between fanti zi and a totally Romanized Chinese written language. In 1951, Chinese leader Mao Zedong advocated total Romanization.

"Reform of Chinese characters must be carried out in the direction of total Romanization that I believe is the mainstream of language development in the world," he said.