Will Mandarin Chinese replace English as the next world language?

It is more beneficial to learn English than Mandarin

Question: Will Mandarin Chinese replace English as the next world language?
Position‹2 of 3›: No, English will remain the world's international language
Argument1 of 5›: It is more beneficial to learn English than Mandarin

English communication is a common denominator in international businesses and political entities such as the United Nations (UN). Continuing in a language that is already so widely spoken will ensure that businesses and political entities continue running smoothly.

The argument

English remains more beneficial for economic opportunities and for practical reasons. There are more Chinese people learning English than there are English speakers learning Mandarin. There is a decline in US students interested in learning Mandarin because of the limited payoff. Some students have reported that the effort to learn Mandarin is not worth it because even if they are seeking employment in China, they find that many Chinese people in their job sector are already fluent in English. Language differences in business or political settings can cause misunderstandings and will hinder progress. It's much easier to communicate in English. For English learners, the difficulties and time needed while learning Mandarin are not worth the payoff.

Context

There are more speakers of English as a second language in China than in any other country. English is so widely spoken elsewhere as well; is there any point in preserving or learning another language in an increasingly globalized world where collaboration and mutual understanding are so needed for progress?

Premises

[P1]A language is more beneficial to learn when it offers greater economic and practical payoff relative to the effort required. [P2] English offers greater payoff than Mandarin, since more Chinese speakers are learning English than vice versa and many Chinese professionals are already fluent in English. [P3] The difficulty and time cost of learning Mandarin outweighs its practical returns for most learners. [C] Therefore, English will remain the world's international language because it is more beneficial to learn than Mandarin.

Counter-arguments

As instant machine learning translations become quicker and more accurate, the need for a global lingua franca may diminish. People may be able to communicate freely in their native language with speakers of other languages, aided by instant language translation.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Individual payoff and global dominance are different questions. The premise concerns what a learner should choose now; the conclusion is a claim about the world's international language over decades, a status set by trade volumes, institutional adoption and the accumulated stock of speakers rather than by the calculation any one student makes. [Rejecting P2] The observation is self-limiting. That many Chinese professionals already speak English is a fact about the present stock, itself the product of past incentives, and it concedes the mechanism the opposing position relies on: a very large population investing heavily in a second language because of where economic opportunity is understood to lie. If that judgement shifts, so does the flow. [Rejecting P3] The cost-benefit calculation is measured against a status quo that machine translation is changing. As instant translation becomes faster and more accurate, the practical return on learning any second language falls — which weakens the case for English as much as for Mandarin, and so undercuts the comparison rather than confirming it.