When I was in Hong Kong and also on Taiwan, all the girls spoke fluent English. So did the bartenders. Don’t ask me how I know. I never learned Chinese but learned a skoshi (sp?) bit of pidgin Japanese while we were there.
China is a world power. Why learn Spanish? Is Mexico a world power?
This thread should cue up Monty Python’s 1980 classic, “I like Chinese”.
FWIW, Eric Idle recently released a video of a cleaned-up PC version of this tune. No more “they only come up to your knees” stuff.
Anyway, if Americans are going to study Mandarin, which written form will they learn? Classical (30,000 characters but 5,000 for basic literacy) or romanized pinyin?
Pinyin, by the way was devised by the communist regime not to achieve greater literacy among the masses (like Ataturk did with romanized Turkish) but to separate modern Chinese from their classical literature & Confucian ethics which were all written classical style.