A heated economics debate that lands on one big claim: China, not the US, is now the model of what works — bad news for anyone who assumes American capitalism is winning by default.

• Most economic schools are driven by ideology, not data — Marx and Milton Friedman both bent their own logic to reach the conclusions they wanted.
• The Soviet system failed because central planning left every sector short of resources, so nobody innovated.
• China gets the best of both worlds: state-run infrastructure plus brutal competition in consumer goods, with 120 car companies fighting for the same market.
• China's growth and its lifting of half a billion people out of poverty beat anything America has done, while US industry has gotten less sophisticated.
• The clearest failure of the free market is US health care — triple the cost per person of other rich countries and shorter lives.

Outlook: Expect more of this argument as China's manufacturing edge widens and US health costs keep climbing.