China has adopted market economics while Cuba still has a command system with most of the economy under state control.

BBC: China signs trade deals with Cuba

It would be surprising if there were not profound differences over one of the biggest issues China faces: how to adapt the political system, organised along Leninist lines and designed for a monolithic command economy, to suit modern China, with a booming private sector and fast-growing middle class.

ECONOMIST: Banyan

Interestingly, in the final years of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev launched a charm offensive aimed at Western investors in the hope of keeping a failing communist system on Western life-support until the Kremlin could construct a more viable economic system (one such gambit was the oxymoronic "command market" economy).

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

The market economy that China seeks is overlaid by a Leninist system of political control that never convincingly did even the job it was designed for: running a command economy.

ECONOMIST: China