The problem with pinyin is that it's phonetic based and it's based on Mandarin. For large sub-populations of Chinese speakers who primarily use other dialects,

The problem with pinyin is that it's phonetic based and it's based on Mandarin. For large sub-populations of Chinese speakers who primarily use other dialects, it's not as intuitive -- although this is changing overtime as Mandarin becomes more dominant across China. A stroke/character based system preserves a key characteristic of Chinese, which is that speakers of different Chinese dialects can all use the same writing system. However, I think Pinyin is easier for Mandarin speakers (in PRC at least) and also non-native Chinese speakers who likely come from a phonetic based writing system and have learned Mandarin using Pinyin.