I think it's probably easier to learn the phonetics of Chinese than reading/writing at first and bootstrap from there. Most of the written information in Latin languages are contained in the first and last characters of each word, while in Chinese it's in the outer edges of each character. The tones are a bit tough for non-native speakers, but they're very consistent so once you "get it" it becomes much easier.

Also you need to actually visit China to take advantage of the "extending the number of people you can communicate with" benefit.