No, it's not an exotic disease, but it is the "hot flush of Chinese in the globe," and it does come from China.

From the lynabc.com website, an interactive platform for helping people learn Chinese:

Recent years, China is becoming stronger and stronger in politics and economy. And now China attracts more attention of other countries,so learning Chinese becomes a trend.Chinese government catches this hot flush to popularize Chinese for enhancing its international influence.

I'll be spending some time here in the next few days to see what's hot.