Slavic languages were written in Cyrillic, but after a while, they started to use the Latin script, and the languages were completely split into separate languages using different scripts, now being known as Eastern and Western Slavic. However, looking at Asian and Middle-Eastern languages, we see that they are not splitting into different languages using different scripts like Slavic languages. Why did that not happen to them?
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China is a very vast empire, and throughout its history their rulers have always doubled down on unifying the languages across the entire empire. Using the same writing system helps with creating national unity and identity, but at a practical level, it helps with governmental administration. Standardization of language, measurement systems, etc has always been part of the agenda of rulers.
What China didn’t or no longer conquer, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Siam (Thai), Burma (Myanmar), Mongols, etc, old China used to have very strong influences over those regions, but now they have evolved their own scripts.
China themselves have not been using the same script throughout its history. Their current script is simplified Chinese script is actually quite a recent evolution of the script. It’s only been around since the mid 1900s.
And the ancient Chinese scripts like the bone script, seal script, and clerical scripts are quite different from even traditional Chinese. If you look at the history of the writing systems used in China, there are a complex web of multiple dozens of distinct regional scripts.
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