> literacy rates are actually lower in countries with ideographic languages The World Bank puts China (97%) behind Korea (98%), but ahead of Vietnam (95%) and

> literacy rates are actually lower in countries with ideographic languages The World Bank puts China (97%) behind Korea (98%), but ahead of Vietnam (95%) and Thailand (94%). They don't have data on Japan, but I'd be surprised if their literacy rate were much lower. (I'm also on my phone, but here's the link: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.ZS?locations=CN-JP-KR-TH-VN&most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.ZS?location... ) I think those literacy rates mostly reflect the quality of these countries' respective education systems, rather than any inherent properties of the scripts used.