I mean, for instance take the kanji & hanzi: 山 (consists of 1 character) while in English: Mountain literally uses 8 letters to spell out (to be clear I am not talking about stroke order) so you can see in alphabetical languages it's "longer" in that sense, but I am mainly discussing word length, as in which one is shorter or longer when written on paper or within sentences. (More info here)
For example, does the character (letter) "A" have it's own semantic definition and concept, while 死 is equivalent to "Mort" in French, "Tod" in German, "Halál" in Hungarian, "Смерть" in Russian, "Dood" in Dutch, "Kuolema" in Finnish, well you get the idea as from those languages they use MULTIPLE letters to spell the word, as opposed to 死 being a single character that already conveys a concept.