That's one hell of a time investment just to read literature in the text (and if I remember right, Tom doesn't have that high an opinion of asian literature to begin with). I'm not very knowledgeable about Chinese, but in Japanese there are all sort of bumps on the road, notably you don't have to go back very far in time to get works which are using archaic or very unusual kanji (some editions will place the syllabaric signs above those kanji to indicate how to read them, but you won't know that ordering a book online..), not to mention that several classics are written in Chinese (thus without the terminations/conjugations etc. modern Japanese adds using the native syllabaries). Bottomline: their own classic literature isn't all that accessible to the average native speaker, or rather it is but through modern translations, but that's rather like reading Rabelais in modern French: there's absolutely no point to that unless you're French and can't be bothered to learn enough archaic French to read it in the text. Translation for translation, an anglophone who can't read renaissance French is much better served by a quality English translation than by a modern French one.

I thought at some point to learn japanese beyond the basics I know (if they can even be called that - when I talk to Japanese friends I call it "grocery store and sushi bar japanese" and I thought my interest in the culture might justify the efforts involved, but a friend of my parents who's an expert on Japanese literarure discouraged me, pointing out I could master a few European languages in the time it would take me to advance with written Japanese enough to get much from reading japanese literature in the text to justify the investment, and that on my own, even with years of study, the odds were really not great I could ever hope to read anything other than modern literature.

As for Chinese as the next lingua franca, I'm pretty much in agreeement with Tom on all points. It's international use might spread, but I doubt it will reach anywhere close to something like the spread of English.

A view I've seen more recently among linguists is to say English is perhaps reaching its saturation point, that its expansion is beginning to meet objections, from scholars and scientists, from businessmen too. For reasons very similar to why Tom or yourself dislike translations. You see more and more scholars (including Eco) challenging the notion that English is one of the easy languages, that it's true enough of "neo colonial" aka "airport English" - the kind I speak, the kind most people using it as a second language worlwide speak, but that going beyond that level of functional bilingualism to truly master the language isn't easy at all for non anglophones (and few are those with a genuine cultural interest in the English language to make the effort), and that the level of English of people using it as lingua franca is such that it's detrimental to the intellectual quality and diversity of their written works - pointing out notably that "airport English" is a highly imprecise language, not that well suited to scientific papers - and it's also very concrete, not that suited to more abstract thinking by non-native speakers (I've noticed some of that reading French philosophy in translation - someone like Foucault is so much easier to understand in English... but is it because the more abstract concepts have to be interpreted more concretely to be rendered in English, at the expense of nuances?), that basic English is excellent as a commercial lingua franca, but its expansion to uses such as sciences, humanities - especially philosophy and sociology, diplomacy wasn't such a good idea - that languages like French or German were much more suited for those tasks. The classic example is that of a UN resolution the Palestianians have interpreted one way and the Israelis another - that couldn't have happened in languages like French or German. After decades and decades of "the more English the better, it simplifies everything", some are noting signs it could be about to slow down (though it's not at the point where it could stagnate, let alone regress). It's still very, very early, but at Francophonie summits we're starting to see far less indifference from French linguists or scholars or politicians for strategies to "defend" the language. They used to find Québécois kind of quaint and funny with that, but it's changing a bit in recent years. Another recent years novelty is that scholars from non-francophone countries have begun to attend those summits as participants to discuss if "common fronts" initiatives wouldn't in order to try to slow down the expansion of English or at least expand the use of the other languages internationally. Years ago, the multinational I worked for at the time was abashed and very displeased to discover we had laws here that prevented them from forcing us to work exclusively in English - "what's that crazyness, you're the only location in the world asking for that" they were telling us, and they let Montréal provide French translations of everything for the employees. At time I left, that had already changed and they had a translation service at the home office and communications were multilingual - their locations in Brazil, Chili and I forget which Asian country had in the meantime introduced similar requirements and they had given up and were using all the local languages (the biggest irony is that the company wasn't anglo-saxon, it was French! At the time it was still US-owned and based in Utah, they had made no problem to adapt to the linguistic laws - it even took them no time to find the people in SLC to take care of translations. Asking the French to communicate in French was like asking them for the moon, however.). Some companies are also recognizing more than before that forcing all their employees worlwide to work in a second language might simplify communications but it also hurts performance and efficiency, in sectors with complex problems to solve, a lot of creativity required and lots of discussions, in any case. English is a fine language when used by anglophones, but "airport English" is rather limited. I notice some of that when I use English - my arguments seem more simplistic or lack nuances, I'm still unable to get used to the lack of precision of my English writing, and my texts are as result always much longer (and always full of parenthesis!), it's like I drop a few IQ points.