[jdietrich]

>Pinyin is definitely a flawed phonetic system, but it's usable and widespread. That's it's real strength

I don't disagree. There's nothing particularly special about pinyin, but it was revolutionary precisely because it rapidly became ubiquitous in Mandarin instruction.

I don't think I can reasonably address the issue of zhuyin vs tongyong vs hanyu without stepping into a political minefield, but I will say that there's a world of difference between achieving full literacy on a small and prosperous island versus achieving full literacy in a vast nation with substantial poverty and under-development.

[uranusjr]

I argue that China would still reach the current literacy rate had they continued to use Zhuyin. The switch from Zhuyin to Pinyin was entirely political, and the two are basically the same to L1 learners. The significance of Pinyin is that it drastically lowers the initial learning barrier for L2+ learners from Europe and Americas (which has trade-offs, but that’s another whole topic).