Traditional and simplified characters in teaching Chinese in Russia as an aspect of Chinese language policy

The article focuses on the issues of how efficiently China excludes traditional Chinese characters while spreading the Chinese language abroad and what linguistic background facilitates the process. The material for the study included the textbooks used to teach Chinese in Confucius Institutes, Schools and Classes in Russia. During the study, an attempt was made to determine whether both traditional characters and the simplified ones are present in the books China chooses for teaching and how common the traditional characters teaching is on the territory of 176 Russia. It was found that excluding traditional Chinese characters from the curriculum is becoming the major tendency that demonstrates China’s efforts to create an image of Chinese as a homogeneous language with one single standard for writing which reflects new afterreform reality. The reason for such a language policy is the desire to eliminate excessiveness triggered by the parallel functioning of traditional and simplified character systems. The linguistic background of unification towards the simplified system includes semantic consistency of traditional and simplified characters and analytic nature of Chinese. However, the use of traditional hieroglific system in publications for the elite and the presence of traditional characters in the kernel vocabulary might help preserve this system for diachronic studies.