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by fiblye 2159 days ago
Zhuyin is also relatively new, at around 100 years old. Historically, the closest thing Chinese had to phonics was fanqie, which was a comparatively obtuse way of representing sounds with other hanzi.[1] Basically, any hint of a true phonetic system probably helped literacy rates during the 1900s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanqie