[Xophmeister]

Noted, but it doesn't detract from my point about C. The number of Mandarin speakers was only to refute the OP's assertion that an anglocentric view of the world biases the opinion of how popular English is as a world language; this is not the case, it is genuinely popular.

[adrianN]

I think it's actually more popular (relatively speaking) than your numbers suggest because of the points I mentioned.

[Xophmeister]

Indeed :)