Well, only a few billion people speak it...what more reason do you need (besides the culture/history behind it) ? :)

Learning Chinese opens up a whole new world to someone outside of the culture.

well , b/c China have at least 1.3 billion people spoke it and also more than Chinese overseas spoke it at home . China's the big country and a development economic , so these're reasons make many people want to learn Chinese beside English and another languages such as German , French , Japanese , Korean , Russian , Spanish , Portuguese , ............ But it's so hard to learn b/c it doesn't use the Alphabet character :(

For me personally, I know that relations between China and the U.S. are going to be very important in the coming years. I want to be a part of that, either in the government or in the private business sector.

I want to learn Chinese because I am Chinese