The goal of Chinese character rationalization or Chinese character optimization (traditional Chinese: 漢字整理; simplified Chinese: 汉字整理; pinyin: hànzì zhěnglǐ) is to, in addition to Chinese character simplification, optimize the Chinese characters and set up one standard form for each of them (and its variants).

Impressive achievements in character optimization have been made in processing of variant Chinese characters, printing fonts, uncommon characters in place names, and characters for some measurement units.

Variant characters (traditional Chinese: 異體字; simplified Chinese: 异体字; pinyin: yìtǐzì), or variants, have two meanings: (a) Characters with the same function (that is, the same pronunciation and meaning) but different forms are variants of each other. (b) Characters of different forms from but the same function as the standard character. The variant characters that have not been officially processed take the former definition, and the variant characters that have been processed and standardized take the latter definition.

The differences among variants may appear at the component level. For example,

Or on the level of whole characters. For example,

The existence of variant characters results in multiple forms for one character, which increases the burden of language learning and application. In the process of Chinese characters application, people need to constantly process variant characters and eliminate inappropriate ones.

There are two different principles for processing variant characters: One is conforming to the customs and simplicity. "Conforming to the customs" means discarding the rare and retaining the familiar, and choosing glyphs that are more popular in society. "Simplicity" means choosing a form with fewer strokes. The other principle is to follow the original form and meaning, based on the character creation method and etymology, especially Shuowen Jiezi.

Mainland China mainly adopts the principle of "conforming to customs and simplicity" in processing variant characters. For example,