Even though I do agree that it takes a lot of effort to learn hazi, I think it would be a real shame if they decided to stop using them... There are a couple of important points in this that should be considered such as homonyms and the great number of various dialects throughout China. Isn't it the case that with hanzi, people are able to read for example newspapers in Chinese despite dialect boundaries? Also, when you think about pictograms, why didn't pictograms in China change into an alphabet as they have elsewhere? I'm quite sure someone has an answer to that, though.

I think that the more likelier change (as opposed to completely abandoning the characters) would be for the government to continue simplifying the characters but this is also slightly problematic as it makes the characters more arbitrary...

Someone told me that learning hanzi prevents dementia - isn't that one more reason why people should continue studying them?