You may be right, I'm not so sure. Chinese is difficult, not just because tones (~4 in Mandarin, ~8(?) in Cantonese) are important for meaning, but because you can't easily fake it or guess when you're reading or writing. The written language is character based, so you can't just spell out the sound of a new word, you have to know it. There are structural parts of some characters that can help you guess, but that's it.<p>So, I think, China is going to have to be almost as powerful in the rest of the world as they are in their own country before people are going to feel it's worth the effort to learn Chinese.