Korea is a good example of this problem. They had no writing system of their own 600 years ago. They used Chinese idiograms. Their illiteracy rate was enormous. In the middle of the 1400s court scholars at the direction of the king developed a simple, purely phonetic alphabet for Korean. Today it contains, 24 letters, IIRC, and can be learned by a non-native in a day or two, making phonetic reading fairly simple. The CIA says China's literacy rate is 90% and Korea's is 98%. And frankly I think the definition of literacy here gives China tremendous benefit of doubt. A Korean who can read, can read *all* Korean words, even if they are unfamiliar. A Chinese person who can read at a basic literacy level would probably find most of the uncommon/scholarly idiograms unintelligible.

Sidenote: I find Chinese writing incredibly beautiful.