It is true that quality of large number of universities in China is poor, but they still provide millions of Chinese teens every year the opportunities to know more about the world outside their native towns or villages. They learn a lot from Internet and classmates even nothing valuable taught in classroom. They will be more confident and be important part in make everything in China better and better.
And it is also true that China invested more and more in education. The average quality is not that good, and the efficiency is low, but there still are big positive impact on China society in general. Before the big leap in higher education, only very few teenagers can enroll the universities. The overall education level is much lower.
As for bots and zombies, it is true that the numbers especially of Weibo are a bit overstated. But the real number is still big, very big. After all China has the biggest population. The smart phones sold in China has exceeded USA last year. Most of the users will install some apps like Wechat, QQ, Weibo and Alipay, etc. So you can calculate the real numbers. The order of magnitude is the same (in hundreds of millions).
Regulation is a problem, but the government does not rule everything. You can find your ways to survive and grow. Nearly all Internet giants including Big Three (we called BAT=Baidu，Tencent, and Alibaba) in China grew from nothing, without a large bank roll or good government connection at least at the beginning.