So there is the thing. Knowing an alphabet isn't enough for anyone to read Greek or any European languages.
Knowing Chinese character however, you would be able to at least make sense of ancient texts, knowing what roughly the underlying text is talking about.
I think you have confused with my claim. It is about continuity. Chinese culture's strong consistency makes it very easy to create a narrative around its histories that it is episodic in nature.
After all, your identity is a collective imagination, it is your belief. It is not an easy sale to German/French people that are bounded by blood because they share some ancient Rome heritage.
In China's case it is an easy sale. The history is written in this way already
Like I said, erudites in the 19th century all across Europe would be fluent in ancient Greek. As to read vs understand, that's the difference between alphabet and ideograms. But IIRC modern Greek speakers have an easy time making sense of ancient Greek.
Kings of Europe would claim their legitimacy comes from the Roman empire times. The pope would continue to crown people emperors of Rome, like Charlemagne (emperor of both Germany and France) Napoleon or the Habsburgs. And Roman empire was in the clear cultural continuity of ancient Greece.
We just don't do these claims (outside of some fringe far-right groups), because they are not really relevant to what our countries are today. Ancient Greeks were xenophobic, misogynistic, pedophiles, mostly authoritarian and militaristic. We are nothing like them, but most cultures have very ancient roots.
And I'll tell you why I react strongly with that. We used to have school programs teaching us similar bullshit. Mostly, the national narrative would be that we, French, are Celts, Franks, who were occupied by the Roman empire, which spawned the aristocracy, until we defeated it during the Revolution. That sense of belonging to a 3000 years old continuity served to foster nationalism and make sure that we don't feel too close to our neighbors.
It is an easy sale, you can write a history with that that is mostly correct. You have to ignore some facts, but for 100 years, "history was written that way" or at least, text books were.
China has decided on this nationalistic narrative that they are a very old consistent and coherent nation that has lasted 3000 years. Never mind the CCP coming to power by being pretty much the opposite of what the empire was or that China has been much smaller and much divided than it is today for most of its history [1]. What it says is that they want to use this history as the basis to legitimate their authoritarianism, "because that's how it always were". I am sure they will put far less emphasis on the periods when it was separated in several different kingdoms. Or on the fact that their unity is more of a successful Mongol enterprise than a local Chinese discovery of good government.
Knowing Chinese character however, you would be able to at least make sense of ancient texts, knowing what roughly the underlying text is talking about.
I think you have confused with my claim. It is about continuity. Chinese culture's strong consistency makes it very easy to create a narrative around its histories that it is episodic in nature.
After all, your identity is a collective imagination, it is your belief. It is not an easy sale to German/French people that are bounded by blood because they share some ancient Rome heritage.
In China's case it is an easy sale. The history is written in this way already