The article mentions that "the study of modern languages is falling across the board in many rich countries" so this phenomenon is not exclusive to Chinese. I

The article mentions that "the study of modern languages is falling across the board in many rich countries" so this phenomenon is not exclusive to Chinese. I think it's part of a larger trend of people choosing not to learn any language besides English because they think that everything else is "useless". The article also mentions Korean as an exception, but it only shows the increase as a percentage. I wonder how many people are actually learning Korean though, because otherwise this could be like that xkcd joke about the fastest growing religion.