Well in fact, China didn't transition to capitalism. If it had done that, people in China would be able to trade their houses freely now, but they can't. However, the officials are not good at managing a country indeed.

The point (3) in your last paragraph would be really amusing to us Chinese students. Yeah, that's the truth that "Chinese higher edu sucks to high heaven". Some said that if we don't go to US for grad school, we won't ever get a real higher education. However, the college stories of these presidents date back to several decades ago, China at that time was... different.