squire:
Your interpretation of the development of written Chinese is interesting but I am afraid I can't entirely agree. I have always thought that the written language simply developed as the culture evolved and that the writing continued to develop until 1958 when Mao Tse Tung decreed that the simplified characters would be used by all. Even now the system is not all that satisfactory as scholars and academics still use the old script and the masses use the new. As an example of this it is well known that the Chinese love caligraphy as an art form , yet it is never written in the new simplified script. Modern caligraphy is written in the running script, cursive script, or standard script and these three scripts have been in use since 4th century AD. It's all very complicated but the system works.
Regards
Hong Xing