Let's not excuse the utter irresponsibility of deciding on 16 bits: the initial 16-bit limit of the character set is instantly invalidated by looking at any comprehensive Chinese character dictionary, no reasonable choice of which will give you an estimate of under about 30k characters, even excluding graphical variants.
Even assuming that we discount 80k+ estimates by collapsing graphical variants, that's over half of your code space right off the bat. For this to seem like a seem like a good idea, you'd need to assume that Chinese is a uniquely bad one-off case. Not a good bet to stake your character set on.
Even assuming that we discount 80k+ estimates by collapsing graphical variants, that's over half of your code space right off the bat. For this to seem like a seem like a good idea, you'd need to assume that Chinese is a uniquely bad one-off case. Not a good bet to stake your character set on.