Sure it is! But Pinyin is more or less what you need to spell out, and there you can see that Chinese is actually not a very "compact" language. But it makes no big difference at all, imho. Human languages seem to have a more or less common "information density".

My point is: I would really like to learn the language. But the writing system is just off-putting.

This is imho an unnecessary high barrier to entry. OTOH I can understand why it isn't an issue for China. They don't "need" any foreigners. They have enough people.