&gt; How much extra space would it really take to write out chinese, if it had it&#x27;s own phonetic script with a few dozen characters?<p>I&#x27;m not a linguist, but my intuition is, that&#x27;s not the problem. We could come up with a system of writing Mandarin sounds compactly using English characters, but I think there would still be too few sounds chasing too many ideas. When you see Chinese characters, meaning immediately appears in your mind. When you see the sounds of Mandarin words, I guess you start thinking about numerous possible meanings.<p>Totally concede that the writing system takes a lot of effort to learn. I think very few people other than the Chinese will ever learn to read it, much less write it.<p>On &quot;development&quot;, it wasn&#x27;t perfectly clear to me what the author meant. Honestly it never occurred to me they meant that the Chinese writing system was slowing the rise of the standard of living in China. Has any country&#x27;s standard of living ever increased more quickly than China&#x27;s? Of course I want all people everywhere to be lifted out of poverty ASAP. I want opportunity for everyone ASAP.