Codes of Modernity: Chinese Scripts in the Global Information Age

Honorable Mention, 2026 Joseph Levenson Prize (China, post-1900), Association for Asian Studies

In the late nineteenth century, Chinese reformers and revolutionaries believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Chinese writing system. The Chinese characters, they argued, were too cumbersome to learn, blocking the channels of communication, obstructing mass literacy, and impeding scientific progress. What had sustained a civilization for more than two millennia was suddenly ...