How did the Chinese send written messages to each other?

Dear TimeGhost,

I have a question regarding sending messages using the telegraph and radio in the Chinese Scripts.
Morse code invented by Samuel Morse was and still is used in the transmission of telegraph and radio messages. But Morse code uses Huffman encoding, meaning in this case that the most frequently used letter (the E) in the English Alphabet received the shortest code (*) to transmit the letter in the message. I know that the Germans whose have a different frequency pattern of letters in their script also used Morse code to transmit messages (with of without Enigma). I have figured out how the Japanese send messages via Morse code (i.e. with the katakana script), but I was wondering if your script does not consist of individual letters, like Chinese, how did they send their messages, regarding of the encryption that was also used?

Greetings from the Netherlands

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There were big tables of characters, each with a number, and you’d just send the number. The other person would have to look it up upon reception.

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What kabelj said. The Chinese would send four digit numbers, each of which corresponded to a character. See

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