There has been recent buzz in the media that Chinese innovators are steaming full-speed ahead, as the United States adds "intellectual property theft" and "indigenous innovation" to their long list of concerns when it comes to China.  And they haven't stopped at social media. 

Introducing Sina Weibo, China's micro-blogging, Twitter equivalent, which enlists 87% of Chinese who spend time on micro-blogging services.

Twitter was banned from Facebook in June 2009 in the lead up to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests and Facebook was blocked almost immediately after during ethnic riots in Xinjiang.  Sina Weibo came in to the "social media vacuum" that was created by the banning of Facebook and Twitter, only to take over as one of China's leading platforms for free speech, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, with much of the content on the site left uncensored by the government. 

An prime example of U.S. intellectual property whizzing across oceans, Sina Weibo, which is publicly traded on the Nasdaq echange, it Twitter's twin sister.  According to Businessweek:

Weibo mimics the format of Silicon Valley's micro-blogging pioneer. "We learned much from Twitter," says [Sina Chief Executive Officer Charles] Chao. Weibo limits posts to 140 characters—though in Chinese, in which many words are just two or three characters, a lot more can be expressed under that constraint than in English. Weibo users follow and comment on updates from other members and can post photos and videos.

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