A review by jeb1945
Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

Though this book is accessible to a general reader it is not a compelling read. The names, places, events of Chinese language politics and scholarship are very difficult to follow. The general thread showing the difficulty of modernizing Chinese character script, the struggle to bring Chinese language into the modern means of communications (from telegraph, typewriting, printing, and digital) and the preeminence of Chinese in the world today. The story is fascinating but it was difficult for a non-Chinese to keep track of  dozens of names of key innovators over a 120 years development of Chinese language characters and technology. China aims at no less a goal than making Chinese the dominant language of the future world.