Chinese writing is not phonetic, while a western alphabet would necessarily be phonetic.
One may think that is a disadvantage for Chinese, but since there such a wide variety of spoken Chinese languages, Chinese writing acts as a unifying framework across different spoken languages.
This allows a (more or less, ignoring traditional and simplified) common script for one billion people.
So a person in Taiwan can reasonably read a newspaper in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing. But that same person would probably have trouble speaking Cantonese with Hong Kongers.
One may think that is a disadvantage for Chinese, but since there such a wide variety of spoken Chinese languages, Chinese writing acts as a unifying framework across different spoken languages.
This allows a (more or less, ignoring traditional and simplified) common script for one billion people.
So a person in Taiwan can reasonably read a newspaper in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing. But that same person would probably have trouble speaking Cantonese with Hong Kongers.