One of the most important factors making languages like English or Spanish central to the internet is that they are spoken widely across the globe by people of diverse nations and cultures.

What are the odds of that happening with Mandarin?

Sure, it might be “central“ to understanding the discourse of almost a quarter of the world’s population, but then the same argument could be made for Hindi.

Also, let’s not forget that Chinese discourse is not free, and that will negatively affect the centrality of all of its languages.