IANALinguist, but it seems to me that the chinese and english versions of 'dragon' are equally complex. Sure, the chinese character takes less width, but it takes 16 strokes (being generous). 'dragon' takes 11 strokes if you're being really harsh. My gut feeling is that while the english word is wider, it's of similar complexity to the chinese word. Gut feelings don't make good science, though :)
Reading a Chinese character means decomposing its sub-parts into sub-meanings. It's not that there are 9 or 10 strokes in the character for dragon that make it complex to read, it's that the outer 4 strokes might signify "beast", the inner strokes "fire", and the cross strokes "immortal".
(Note: I don't actually know how to read this character this is just an illustration)
