[KyleGoetz]

My experience as a native English speaker is that Chinese grammar is easier than Japanese grammar for a native English speaker (but not by much and therefore should not be considered in choosing a language to learn), but that the writing is more difficult.

I also think tones are a relatively minor part of Chinese difficulty. English pretty much has three of the tones as well, but not used as tones per se. But the sounds exist and are therefore easy to use. Rising tone = English question ("what?"), falling tone = English command ("LEAVE!"), high tone = English singing ("la~").