At the college in Louisiana, I was once talked to by a student who came from Japan to study English. He suddenly showed the internet article titled "10 most influential languages in the world".
Of course, English took first place therein while Japanese was ranked the eighth, but he then tried to emphasise most that there was no name of Chinese in the list.
"Indeed, Chinese has the largest speakers population, but most of the population are confined in China, which is hardly worth regarding as a developed country."
The ensuing argument he gave was mere vilification based on racism (so that I shan't quote it here), and I had to listen to it while looking on the name of language ranked the second in the list ― "Mandarin".

I shall not deal here with his ignorance of the word "Mandarin" (the standard Chinese based on Peking dialect), but the problem is that he scarcely seemed to doubt that ranked next to English was the language which he didn't know.
For my part, I would soon utilise modern conveniences to know of it, in short, I would google it.
As far as I may judge from his intellectual indifference, I understood why Japanese people often believe in stereotyped ideas or in arguments without any scientific fact