And that's how it's played out. Nearly every developed nation teaches English as a second language or is a native population of English speakers. The universal language is English. The JVM bytecode for people is English.
Certainly you will find people learning other languages for trade depending on the region, but even in East Asia, as you say, English is taught in China, Japanese, Korea. In Singapore English is the language everyone learns (and is taught in). In Vietnam the primary foreign language taught is English. In the Philippines one of its official languages is English. Argentina teaches English in elementary school. In Brazil students from grade 6 have to learn a language, which is usually English. In Venezuela English is taught from age 5.
So what exactly do I have to tell them?
What are you telling me? That I need to drop English?
Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn. It isn't an elite pursuit in the way you suggest, because its community isn't gatekept. I personally have met people of all social classes who have been interested in it.
It was also never meant to be a first language, it is an auxiliary language. It is possible for an English speaker to have a conversation with a Mandarin speaker with no intermediary if both know the (comparatively easy to learn) Esperanto. Its original purpose wasn't trivial either: it was created to stop groups without a common language in the same city (Warsaw, I think?) fighting, created on the basis that they'd stop doing so if only they could speak a common language.
Think of it as JVM bytecode for people.