I checked your link out. Maybe it is not as bad as you say it is. First, although people are prone to forgetting how to exactly write characters by hand, they are able to recognize far more characters than before, as the evidence of Japanese kanji use increasing due to computer/phone input methods. Second, it doesn't affect literacy as people are able to READ the characters. This is a similar phenomenon that I think all university students can attest to in the Western world today. I have trouble spelling rudimentary words in essays sometimes, like the word weird is often written as "wierd". All kinds of spelling issues and writing issues have developed from the takeover of the typing technology with spell-check but also due to quick finger reflexes where you do not consciously think of each letter being pressed on.
No, not really. I've read various studies, such as this one, which have suggested that around 50-60% of the general populace have significant difficulties in reading commonly used kanji, let alone writing them. Japanese people can get away with this because they can technically resort to kana if they forget a particular character, but a similar leeway cannot be applied to Chinese, as pinyin and zhuyin (bofomofo) are only used as phonetic guidelines, not as writing systems that can stand on their own. It also doesn't make sense to compare Chinese characters directly to English, as the latter in itself is extremely convoluted in terms of spelling due to preserving historical pronunciations, and in many respects represents the "worst-case scenario" for an alphabet. As a result, a much better comparison would be Spanish, as it largely tends to represent pronunciation well.
AND Finally, seriously, this is an unfair argument in the first place. This phenomenon relates to INPUT methods. Prior to modern technology, who would be noticing "character amnesia" in the logograpm world if computers/romanization input methods simply do not exist! The literate in ancient times would not have been suffering from this. Ironically, it seems that this kind of technology has boasted literacy, because people can recognize more characters though they cannot write them precisely/correctly by hand. I know many Chinese people born in Canada/USA who can read restaurant menus but cannot hope to write those same read characters out. And they all went through Chinese school once/twice a week for some time in their lifetime.
No, it is not. You specifically mentioned contemporary literacy rates, which also have nothing to do with trends that had existed centuries ago. If you had mentioned historical literacy rates, I would have stated that it would have taken much more time and effort for peasants in China to memorize thousands of characters, as opposed to their contemporaries in Europe memorizing alphabets, although both would have involved low literacy rates overall. In addition, pinyin in China and zhuyin (bofomofo) in Taiwan, not to mention overseas populations utilizing similar systems, are specifically used to teach schoolchildren how to read. This situation as a whole is probably the biggest factor contributing to higher literacy rates, and would have been unnecessary if Chinese characters on their own were more then enough to teach children how to write. Does this mean that most of the Chinese population is functionally illiterate? No. Does this mean that it's much more likely for Chinese speakers to forget how to write specific words? Yes.
Also, as someone who has minored in Chinese, and was required to handwrite an essay every week for two semesters, I will say that it takes much more time and effort to write in Chinese than in English. Although students who grew up in China would have been much more exposed to hanzi for a far longer period of time, this still doesn't change the fact that learning how to write characters requires much more investment than doing the same for alphabets, although "spelling" can certainly pose as significant issues for both.
The problem I have with this is that it does not recognize spheres of influence, but rather makes it seem as if it was based on the people of certain countries weighing the merits of different writing systems. Just as the Greeks were never presented with the Phoenician alphabet alongside Egyptian hieroglyphics from a linguist, the people of Thailand did not at any time in their history give such conscious decision making in deciding Brahmic over Chinese characters. The spheres of influence of India were much greater in Southeast Asia in earlier times, before China even made it down to the Southern Yue tribes of Canton, Vietnam, Yunnan etc. Whereas the Japanese and Koreans, could only accept Chinese characters because that was the only system introduced to them in the time period they decided to adopt writing.
Finally, I would argue that the modern conscious decisions to reject Chinese characters in local writing systems like in Vietnam or Korea is mainly due to geopolitical and ideological developments in the 20th Century. Let's face it, China became isolated post 1949.
Both India and China contacted various entities within Southeast Asia around the 1st century AD or so, mostly through trading routes, although Chinese individuals probably arrived slightly later. In any case, it was not until the 7th century or so that the Tibetan and Khmer scripts came into use, despite the fact that China had contacted Funan around the 3rd century, along with various other states within Southeast Asia over the next several centuries. As a result, while China was not as culturally influential as India, there would have been enough time for states in the region to consider the viability of Chinese characters if they had been so inclined. In addition, other scripts, such as Burmese, Thai, and Lao, were adopted centuries later, at which point the respective states would have experienced significant trading and diplomatic relations with China as a whole.
Your analysis also ignores scripts in Central Asia, as various entities, such as the Xiongnu and Xianbei, never adopted Chinese characters to represent their respective spoken languages, while the Uyghurs specifically created the Old Uyghur alphabet based on the Sogdian one. Also, the Mongols used writing systems derived from Uyghur (Classical Mongolian script), Tibetan ('Phags-pa), along with Chinese characters, all in order to represent Mongolian. Despite the fact that the first two were invented in the 13th century, along with the gradual sinicization of the Mongol court by the mid-14th century, the latter two quickly fell into disuse soon after the Yuan collapsed. The Manchus also created the Manchu alphabet after inspiration from the Mongolian one before establishing the Qing, despite the fact that they had also undergone significant sinicization for centuries prior.
In addition, both Korea and Vietnam abandoned Chinese characters not due to China's sudden "isolation" after 1949, but because of their status as colonies, although for different reasons. Korean individuals began to promote Hangul through publications in order to resist Japanese influences after it was annexed in 1910, although it had continuously been in informal use since the mid-15th century, while other systems, specifically Idu, Gugyeol, and Hyangchal, which were used to represent the Korean language, never became widely used due to their complexities. On the other hand, while Chữ Nôm, which was a extremely complicated system of both original and modified Chinese characters, had managed to remain in use within Vietnam for centuries, they were eventually abolished soon after French missionaries began to promote Quốc Ngữ by the early 20th century.
Both countries continued to promote their respective alphabets despite their eventual independence by the mid-20th century, and it's worth noting that North Korea even went as far as to ban the use of hanja in official texts, despite continuing to retain close ties with China, although the South still retains some for disambiguation purposes. These conditions were possible in both countries, as opposed to that of Japan, as both languages have much more syllables than can be solely rendered through Chinese characters (Japanese has far less syllables than even Mandarin), not to mention that it is virtually impossible to represent native articles and conjugations only through characters without introducing a convoluted set of rules, which had occurred in historical "native" systems, causing them to remain unstandardized, along with significant comprehension difficulties.
Ultimately, the fact that Chinese characters are the only logograms currently in use suggest that attempting to do the same for other writing systems would have become extremely untenable, as they were retained partly due to tradition, and partly due to the gradually increasing occurrence of homophones after over two millennia of evolution.
EDIT: I also forgot to mention that within Maritime Southeast Asia, the Malay language adopted several Brahmic scripts by the 7th century, due to influences from India, although they were eventually replaced by the Jawi alphabet (derived from Arabic) in the 14th century after Arab traders arrived, and was then in turn displaced by the Malay alphabet, or Rumi (Latin alphabet), by the 20th century due to influences stemming from British colonialism. As a result, it would have been more than possible for other scripts to be adopted through cultural diffusion across the region, suggesting that Chinese characters were ultimately not adopted by entities across Southeast Asia for cultural and practical reasons.
EDIT 2: Here's another link concerning the issues associated with kanji literacy, along with one discussing hanzi literacy.
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