Let's start with some good news; many Chinese speak more than one language. The bad news is that those are mostly 'Chinese' languages. A popular misconception is that Chinese is one language with several dialects but that is not so, Cantonese, Teochew and Mandarin, to name a few, are separate languages making use of the same character set (for a romanticized history on this watch the 2003 movie 'Hero').
Mandarin Chinese is sort of the 'lingua franca' and if you are considering learning Chinese seriously it may be best to learn that. If you just want to know some polite phrases then stick with the local language.
Chinese languages do have local accents and small differences and there are also different character sets in use to make matters complicated. If you have a long-term posting give it a try though.
You will be able to use English to a limited extent in the bigger cities but, though the number of English speakers increases, be prepared that the level of English 'on the street' is not very high at best.
The Chinese grammar is very different from any Western language and this makes translation sometimes quite difficult, even for experienced bi-linguals. When you are conducting business through an interpreter and do not fully understand the questions/answers/line of conversation try and say or ask the same thing in a different way to ensure there are no mis-interpretations (in the language at least, cultural mis-interpretations are another matter).
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