>A compound word has a meaning which is distinct from the sum of its parts
Right. That's the point. This clearly shows that Chinese has multisyllabic words.
And yes, there are plenty of examples of compounds with meanings that have nothing to do with their components, e.g.:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%8A%B1%E7%94%9F
But of course, if you already have the preconception that the parts of a compound word are independently meaningful, it's easy to tell yourself some kind of story about how they actually do contribute something to the meaning of the whole. Similarly, there are cranks who insist that particular non-morphemic sound sequences in English carry an independent meaning.
It really is amazing how confused people can get by orthography. Chinese has words composed of multiple syllables whose parts are not independently meaningful. Period. Again, this is information that's available all over the place, e.g.:
http://www.101languages.net/chinese/morphology.html
Or from Wikipedia:
>The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but in general there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which is only about an eighth as many as English.[b]
Or here:
http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/message-details1.cfm?asklin...