This study investigated the development of component awareness, semantic radical identification ability, semantic radical knowledge application, Chinese character recognition, and the relationship among these abilities in nonnative speakers. A total of 139 Vietnamese undergraduates majoring in Chinese language who were sorted according to Chinese learning time (second-year, third-year, and fourth-year students) took part in the present study and completed a delayed copy task, a semantic cue searching task, a sentence cloze task, and a Chinese character recognition test. The results showed that (1) semantic radical identification ability, semantic radical knowledge application, and Chinese character recognition improved with additional Chinese language study; (2) there were significant positive correlations among component awareness, semantic radical identification, semantic radical knowledge application, and Chinese character recognition; and (3) semantic radical identification ability and semantic radical knowledge application partially mediated the relationship between component awareness and Chinese character recognition after controlling for Chinese learning time and orthographic awareness. Component awareness impacts semantic radical knowledge application through semantic radical identification, which in turn influences Chinese character recognition. In other words, component awareness positively predicts Chinese character learning for nonnative Chinese learners.