"The National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language in Beijing says there are approximately 30 million people learning Chinese around the world, and China plans to push this figure to 100 million by 2007. The Government is spending $ 25 million a year on this."

Read more of "Chinese Influence Seems Unstoppable" from The Seoul Times

Free travel resources abound online. However, it is often difficult to soft through all of the content out there and find genuinely good information. Here I have added only a few links, but they are quality and you will find a lot of good information at these sites:

Wikitravel China

Lonely Planet Thorn Tree East-Asia

Going to China dot com

Happy Travels! :)