As it so happens, I lived in China for 9 years, swam in the startup tech circles, and built a startup around WeChat. I can tell you with authority that you are wrong that WeChat won through market forces. China operates by allowing many startups to flourish, and when a particular industry becomes dangerous or important to their national interests, they shut down all but one, and put state backing into that one. They play king makers. Tencent, and WeChat, while well run and built, is basically state owned software.

I saw this whole ordeal play out with Twitter clones. There were maybe ten with traction. Then the gov stepped in and there were none. And then Weibo rose from the flames as the winner.