Chinese character
Left: "Chinese character" in Traditional Chinese. Right: "Chinese character" inSimplified Chinese. Pronounced as Hànzì,kanji, hanja, and Hán tự.
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	漢字
Simplified Chinese	汉字
Transliterations
Japanese name
Kanji	漢字
Hiragana	かんじ
Transliterations
Korean name
Hangul	한자
Hanja	漢字
Transliterations
Vietnamese name
Quốc ngữ	Hán Tự (Sino-Viet.) Chữ Nho (native tongue)
Hán tự	漢字 (Sino-Viet.) 字儒 (native tongue)

A Chinese character, also known as a Han character (汉字 / 漢字; Hànzì), is a logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi), Japanese(kanji), less frequently Korean (hanja), and formerly Vietnamese (hán tự), and other languages. Chinese characters are also known assinographs, and the Chinese writing system as sinography. Chinese characters are the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world.

The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is approximately 47,035, although a large number of these are rarely used variants accumulated throughout history. Studies carried out in China have shown that full literacy in the Chinese language requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters.

In the Chinese writing system, the characters are monosyllabic, each usually corresponding to a spoken syllable with a basic meaning. However, although Chinese words may be formed by characters with basic meanings, a majority of words in Mandarin Chinese require two or more characters to write (thus are polysyllabic) but have meaning that is distinct from but dependent on the characters they are made from. Cognates in the various Chinese languages/dialects which have the same or similar meaning but different pronunciations can be written with the same character.

Chinese characters have also been used and in some cases continue to be used in other languages, most significantly Japanese (where a single character can represent several spoken syllables), Korean, and Vietnamese. Chinese characters are used both by meaning to represent native words, ignoring the Chinese pronunciation, and by meaning and sound, to represent Chinese loanwords. These foreign pronunciations of Chinese characters are known as Sinoxenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Ancient Chinese.

Chinese characters
Scripts
Precursors · Oracle bone script · Bronze script · Seal script (Small Seal Script ·Large Seal Script) · Clerical script · Regular script · Semi-cursive script · Cursive script Type styles Imitation Song · Ming · Sans-serif
Properties
Strokes · Stroke order · Radicals ·Classification · Section headers
Variants
Standards
Kangxi Dictionary (Kyūjitai) · Tōyō kanji ·Jōyō kanji · Standard Form of National Characters · List of Forms of Frequently Used Characters · Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo
Reform
Japanese script reform · Simplified Chinese characters · Traditional Chinese characters ·Simplified/traditional debate
Sinoxenic usage
Kanji · Hanja · Hán tự
Homographs
Literary and colloquial readings
Derivatives
Kokuji · Korean hanja · Bopomofo · Chữ Nôm · Nü Shu · Kana (Man'yōgana) · Idu ·Zetian characters · Sawndip · Khitan ·Jurchen · Tangut