I’m not completely sure if I understand your question about whether if simplification “works”. If you’re asking whether if people can learn to read or write it, the answer is yes. China has maintained an economic growth rate of about 10% per year for twenty-five years, and in the process surpassed previously richer neighbors such as India, in both wealth and literacy. I really don’t see the what relevance Taiwan’s literacy rate has to character simplification, though. Taiwan was developed extensively by the Japanese before WWII. Furthermore, it has been receiving support and trade from the US for decades that mainland China has had little access to until recently. It’s not a very fair comparison.

I realize that literacy statistics are controversial, but according to the CIA World Factbook you cited, China’s literacy rate is 90.9%. In comparison, India’s is 59.5%. Brazil, a large country that has a significantly higher per capita GDP than China does, has a listed literacy rate of 86.4%.

[...] although progress has been made in recent years because of government popularization efforts, “at least 40 percent of Chinese are still unable to speak standard Chinese.”

He said people who cannot speak putonghua are mainly those with “little education,” or “the illiterate,” and most of them are rural residents.

That comes from Xinhua, so those numbers are certainly lower than the harsh reality.

Does simplification work? The CIA Factbook says the literacy rate in Taiwan is 96.1% (2003 figure). Read more about Xinhua and Chinese literacy (or lack thereof) here.

There are some cases where the traditional form is easier to remember or more meaningful than the simplified. I think some of the simplifications were poorly chosen. A more ideal character set would be somewhere in the middle. Two systems is enough already though. I don’t want to suggest the creation of a third simplified/traditional character system.