At the turn of the 20th century, many Chinese literati shared the same sentiment. This was when Western ideas were in vogue, when China was getting humiliated b

At the turn of the 20th century, many Chinese literati shared the same sentiment. This was when Western ideas were in vogue, when China was getting humiliated by Western power, and when Communist ideas had currency. In fact, at one point the CCP had plans to eventually transition Chinese characters to phonetic symbols. How it went was a classic tale of standardization without implementation. The first round of simplifications incorporated simplifications that were already in common use in informal settings, in calligraphy, and in ancient forms. This led it to be readily adopted. (fun fact; "traditional Chinese characters" are in some cases newer than simplified characters, where the character in question acquired a popular different meaning due to its use for phonetically similar words, and the old sense started to be used with a modified character to distinguish it from the borrowed meaning!) The next round of simplification was too radical for the people, and so it was eventually rolled back.