Rote learning undermines the curiosity, critical thinking and rebelliousness essential for success in today's globally networked society. Yet WeChat's creator, Pony Ma (Ma Huateng), was educated in China, not Silicon Valley. The forty-one-year-old founder and CEO of the Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings built WeChat – or Weixin ("micro-message") as it is known in Chinese – on the back of Tencent's extremely popular QQ instant messaging platform. In April 2012, Weixin was rebranded WeChat and Ma announced his intentions to spread the app's influence far beyond China's nearly 600 million internet users. Not much more than a year later, WeChat is available in eighteen different languages, with over one hundred million registered users outside China (a figure that doubled in only three months).