It's also not entirely out of question that English is more prominent as a language in mainland China without a nasty brutal colonial era or whatnot. For instance, an earlier modernization push with more odd/wonky ideas (I believe IOTL there was a movement to completely romanize the language, prompting 赵元任 to write 施氏食狮史 in response) could see a much larger push to teach western languages for trade/diplomatic/etc. purposes.
Zhao actually wrote "施氏食狮史" to illustrate how Classical Chinese would be insufficient to represent spoken Chinese, as he was a proponent of using vernacular Chinese in writing. Given that he (helped to) develop General Chinese and Gwoyeu Romatzyh, both of which were phonetic systems, it's safe to say that he also favored romanization.
However, China under Mao eventually decided to use Simplified Chinese for various cultural, political, and practical reasons.