actually is depends because most of the people learn a language for their skills. In Colombia, a lot of people wants to learn chinese because they want to make some business and not all the chinese there speak very well Spanish.

Americans in general are not very interested in learning a foreign language. they may study it but never really learn it. from my experience, Chinese learning has increased a little but not very much in the states. Also the types of chinese people learn can be simplified characters and mandarin to traditional characters and cantonese. my university taught mandarin and traditional characters. your first question about what happened is not clear. i dont know what you are asking because there is no object.

Same as in China, mate. Some people are interested in politics/economics and some people aren't. As China's influence on world politics and world economics grows larger, more and more people will start to learn Chinese. At the moment though, there are just a few people who want to learn Chinese. (In my country, that is.) In fact, my classes got cancelled because not enough people were interested. :( So now I have to learn by myself.

I don't understand what you are talking about when you ask if people in the United States are usually concerned about what happened. Are you talking about a specific event? About Chinese- many people realize that the U.S.'s relationship with China is very important, so more and more people are beginning to learn it. Not everyone is required to learn Chinese, because each state has its own laws about education.