English is a second language in both China and Japan.......To their credit, the highly educated from those countries speak better English than many in our failing high schools........
Agreed.
They learn it in school.
And with 1.5 billion people, it would be easy enough to have that distinction.
If you want to get anywhere in this world professionally, you need English.
In the medical profession, I hear a lot of complaints that patients cannot understand their foreign trained MDs, as their accents are very thick.
Sure there are plenty of Italian and French businesses out there, but you are really limited if you want go international.
If I were to learn a useful for business language, I'd study Mandarin.