To be fair, by European linguistic standards, Chinese actually encompasses a number of languages, such as Shanghainese, Hokkien, and Cantonese, to name just a few. For millions of Chinese, speaking standard Mandarin is as big a deal as speaking English for a European. Along those same lines, since English is a European language, as much as they might study, it takes about three or four times longer for a Chinese speaker to learn English than for a European (maybe two times longer than for an Indo-Iranian) to do so. Finally, with a billion Mandarin speakers all in close geographic proximity, there just isn’t that compelling a need to master a foreign language — a bit like in the USA, Latin America, or some other large countries, for that matter.

English education level is various in different parts of China. Most of young generation in major city do speak English, though many of which can just manage basic conversation.

For the elder, say, older than 40, rarely speak foreign language; unless he's cultivated. Actually many of them have no interest in learning a second language; especially under help of translation app, they can handle daily conversation when traveling, etc.