Zhang's views on Chinese Culture

Zhang's ideas about classical education were revolutionary. He believed that Chinese culture had to be abandoned altogether, for even though it was immensely rich, it had an equal number of liabilities. Like the Yangtze river, which flowed faster than one might think, Chinese culture was indeed great in the present as well as in the past but did not consider human intervention and was impossible to purify. The result was that the culture could be appreciated only by aristocrats. Adapted to the few, it was undemocratic.

The main problem was that the difficult writing required at least ten years to learn and thus effectively precluded the dissemination of culture. The masses had to make a living, which, of course, was not easy, and they didn't have time to master a complicated language. As long as characters were used, the masses would be illiterate. An ideographic language was protection for any autocratic polity and ensured an uneducated population. China could no compete with more civilized nations as long as it took half a lifetime to learn how to read. With such a handicap, how could a nation absorb the science and culture of other nations? The only solution was to adopt a phonetic writing system. Although the transition would be invonvenient for their own generation, for the sake of future ones, it had to be begun, now. Inconvenience for Zhang and Taiming meant convenience for their descendants. [...]

In this way, the literati had ruled China for many centuries. The common people could not even correspond with one another.

(Wu Zhuoliu, Orphan of Asia, pp 133-134. Zhang's views on Chinese culture and the Chinese language).