alt Hacker NewsWith all due respect, I don't think you know what you're talking about. =)
My personal experience as a Western tourist is that I could travel all around China for 2 months with no real issues. The provided itinerary was mostly a formality (and I didn't have to stick to it strictly). I managed to book hotels, trains, I even got a permit to go to Tibet (although a guide was required for that portion of the trip). It's true not all hotels can host foreigners, but in practice that's rarely a problem.
Although I personally wouldn't live there long term, China has actually a lot to offer as a tourist destination. It's very safe and there's lots of interesting history and beautiful nature to explore. It can obviously be challenging to move around without speaking the language, but some spirit of adventure goes a long way.
We're not talking about whether China is worth visiting. I think so, my tourist visa experience was in fact applying to walk a part of the Chinese Silk Road in 2019 with my (Cantonese-speaking but non-Chinese national) wife and we were politely told to shelve that particular idea permanently. There was no visa-free entry at all back then. We ended up going to Macao instead, and had a good time, though not at all what we originally planned.
In any case, the question was whether learning a Chinese language allows you to go on unique tourist experiences that would otherwise be unavailable. And the answer is that it doesn't, certainly not to the extent that it's worth learning a language, because, as you yourself state, you don't need to know the language to visit the approved destinations, and while there are some experiences that would require you to know the language, they are anyway outside the approved set of destinations and you'll be blocked using all bureaucratic systems from visiting them anyway.