Your analysis of history belongs in the early 20th century! Seriously, read a newer history book! China was developmentally ahead of the western world in many areas (statism, literature, economy) for centuries before the west figured out how to build guns and decent boats and subsequently conquer the world. The Chinese actually had the first two before us, but lacked the ambition to do the latter. Had the emperor not ordered him to stop, Zheng He could have gone to Europe and made us crap our pants with his huge fleet.

You talk of failed systems, but do you believe that the current dominant political and economic systems are not doomed to failure as well? As history indeed shows, all systems of governance have failed and been replaced by more efficient ones, so what makes you say the current western system is the best that humanity will ever discover? Our descendants 500 years from now will look upon the present western notion of superiority as just as ridiculous as that of the ancient Chinese and Roman rulers.

You've got it turned on the head. Old Chinese has a lot more phonemes than any modern dialect of Chinese, so it's wrong to say that characters evolved because of a lack of phonemes. Rather, the argument goes that modern Chinese lacks the phonemic variety to be written in a phonetic script. The website you link to, however, disagress with this conclusion.