As a supporter of multilingual education in general I'm all for this in principle. That said, language learning really needs a media ecosystem to sustain it ou

As a supporter of multilingual education in general I'm all for this in principle. That said, language learning really needs a media ecosystem to sustain it outside the classroom. (Most Americans take token Spanish or French but would be hard pressed to go beyond 'hola' or 'bonjour' in real life.) Beijing projects its power through economic and political means. But that's not enough. Unlike e.g. Japan (anime, video games) or South Korea (K-drama, K-pop), China still doesn't have pop-cultural "soft power" to help fuel said ecosystem -- I'd argue this is the main problem China needs to overcome for the language to really take off in non-Chinese communities.