In Chinese, there are a great number of characters. But as a matter of fact, some characters are seldom used. Those that are widely used total around 5,000 to 8,000, and only 3,000 or so characters are used in everyday life and cover 99.9 percent of characters appearing in books and newspapers. Among these some 3000characers, 950 are of the highest frequency of appearance, covering 90 percent of those printed in books and newspapers. If you have mastered these characters, you will be able to read Chinese. So 1000 characters will be enough for a foreign student.