I strongly object to the claim "In reality, English spelling is more like learning Kanji." as someone who had to learn both Chinese and English characters.
Both rely on groups of characters. Both are non-phonetic. Both rely on multiple memorized pronunciations for those character groups based on surrounding character group context. Both preserve symbol shape for reason of historical context.
There are certainly differences, but if you place current English spelling next to something like Shavian (or some other language with near-pure phonetic spelling), I'd say that Modern English learning patterns are closer to Kanji than the pure phonetic alphabets.
