Comment by stickfigure

> That is a wild claim

It is not.

The vast majority of English speakers do not live in the US or the UK. English is the most widely spoken language in the world. If you are at dinner with people from several countries, the "Lingua Franca" will almost certainly be English.

The popularity of Mandarin relies on the sheer mass of native speakers in China. That population is shrinking and that shrinking is expected to accelerate. The cultural export of China is inherently limited by its ideology - there's a reason we have (had, really) "Hong Kong Cinema" not "Peking Cinema".