I definitely wouldn't argue with you; historically, China is the source of a huge portion of humankind's inventions, and I am sure there is a great deal of innovation happening there right now.

My point was more narrowly that the current system of government there, and the lack of information freedom the automatically comes with it, presents a serious obstacle for innovative businesses (particularly anything to do with computing, mobile, and internet, a huge swath of the modern economy).

Agreed, weixin is awesome, but how likely are they to gain real international traction so long as messages from anywhere are subject to the same censorship regime?