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How Many Chinese Characters Exist?

How many characters do you have to know to be able to read a Chinese newspaper? And how many Chinese characters exist in total?

Chinese children learn 3000 characters in the first six school years. This is sufficient for reading books and newspapers. Chinese who can master more than 1500 characters are regarded as literate. Educated Chinese have internalized about 6000 characters. With the knowledge of the most common 3500 characters you are at least able to read about 99.7% of a text.

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