Great. Another 'benevolent' Russian leader. I assume you mean Putin got reelected. Yay. I prefered Gorbachev...at least he had a map of Japan tatooed on his head.
Anyway...
1. I don't think democracy/socialism/communism in-and-of-themselves encourage or discourage innovation. Well, communism does, since you don't get shit out of it. It's more a social climate thing, I think. I don't see the Chinese government encouraging a whole lot of free thought and interchange of ideas (the great firewall of china, eh?). That's why I don't think they can compete. China vs the rest of the world, basically, since at a professional level noone cares what nationality their counterparts are. err...anyway...
2. Power failure. There are some issues with the infrastructure, but the biggets problem (from what I understand) was some sort of software glitch. Doesn't matter, the fact it happened is bad enough and is a strong reason for not having such a massively integrated power structure.
3. New job. The current job I do tech support. I talk to customer (usually telecom or IT people representing some company). New job would have been in the quality assurance part testing software and hardware. No more talking to customers. That's a good thing.
Blah. Bored of typing.