[duo797]

I'm told by one of the chinese teachers who is a native of beijing that the simplified characters were the shorthand for most of the hanzi and when the communist government came in they made it official. Also, to readers of chinese who use traditional characters, I feel like once you figure out a few common simplifications it's not as hard to read simplified characters. Also of note to the OP, there are some kanji that were partially simplified on their own in japan but simplified in a different manner from chinese. Example: 覚える and 覺 ->觉