True. Chinese wasn't very expansive country so Chinese hasn't very big changes being lingua franca.
Well China was expansive to some extent in East Asia. But the most important reason for becoming an important language is in my opinion economic power. And IF China due to early political reforms would have developed in a similar way than lets say Japan, THAN China would be much more important than the USA is IOTL, both economically and politically and therefore also culturally. Early colonies are not necessary.
BTW IMO the importance of the colonial empires are overestimated for the importance of a "world language".
Sure, Britain had a unbelievable huge Empire IOTL. But nevertheless that is not the most important reason for the dominance of the English language nowadays.
For the sake of argument let us imagine that German (or French) were the official language of the USA today. Do you really think that English still had its status as unchallenged lingua franca today?
Usually the following is true: economic power+political power ==> cultural influence