Mutual intelligibility.
French and English use the same alphabet, but have you ever noticed that as an English speaking person you can’t understand most things written in French despite recognizing the alphabet? Apparently, French people have the same trouble with reading English.
However, if you speak any language in the Chinese language group that uses Chinese characters for writing, and you follow a set of standard rules, it’s easy for a Mandarin speaker to understand what a Cantonese speaker has written down even though they can’t understand each other’s spoken languages.
Now Chinese is seriously weird this way. If you transcribe what a Mandarin speaker says word for word, it’s unlikely a Cantonese speaker would be able to understand it, and vice versa. However, there is a standard way of writing Chinese that preserves the meaning of a sentence perfectly.
Here in Canada, with an English speaking majority and a substantial French speaking minority, you pretty much have to write everything twice.
And in other countries, like Switzerland, it can be even worse
Not a problem in Chinese. One written language fits all. Although the Chinese writing system is a lot more difficult to learn, and darn near impossible to write, it’s easier to read than write.
I’m pretty sure those first two symbols mean “no doing this”
Another benefit – as a rule, Chinese characters take up less space than words spelled with an alphabet.