I've only learned Japanese as far the N4 test (second of five levels of the standardized tests), but my experience backs this up. Those tests preferred syllabic symbols instead of kanji, and that just made them harder to read for me.
Chinese doesn’t have a writing system that mixes different sets of pictographs. It has traditional and simplified versions of the writing system but they’re not intermixed the way Japanese does it.
Such mixing is simply not required in Chinese since words in all Chinese varieties are not inflected. There are some particles that are quite common (like 了 and 子), but they are very easy to write. The Simplified Characters are further optimized for writing speed. Most importantly 儿 for 兒 and 个 for 個, since these characters are very common in Modern Standard Chinese.