Sorry, I realise this is half-joking and not at all the point of your post, but I find it interesting...

Otoh, I really don't want to learn chinese, meh

It's unlikely to become the lingua franca over night, especially since Chinese already speak English (well, the ones you're likely to come in contact with). Maybe your grand-children will learn it in school though.

Apart from the characters and pronunciation, the latter of which is probably quite easy if taught at an early age, Chinese is quite straightforward. There's no regular vs irregular verbs because there are no inflections at all - no cases, no tenses, no plural forms. Just plop the words down in the right order and you're done. And as a second language, I guess we would only use pinyin until quite late in school.