Oh really? And do you have built-in microblogging platform? Do you have OCR with English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation? Do you have mobile payments? Do you have discover people feature (by location)? Can you identify movies by recording audio? Not only payments are possible, you can send money to anyone in WeChat. Sadly, some of these functionality are not available for non Chinese people (people without account in Chinese bank).

Are you sure about the "whole lot more functionality" thing? I am not aware of any other app that combines chat with taxis, for example.

It's more like Chrome/Google play framework in China (and they are all blocked). Not surprising if you compare WeChat to a combination of GPay, GGame, GStore, etc.

241 MB on my pixel 3. Though FB messenger (comparable feature set) is also bloated at 126 MB. (Whatsapp, pure chat, by comparison is 47 MB)

You should try to inspect how many files they've stored on your SD card. I recently checked with my friend who says he barely use it and it was over 35.000.