You think the chinese system -- with hundreds of millions of people living in squalor -- works?

It certainly functions.

Lots of functioninal things lower quality of life. That's not a very rigid or useful test.

China is not really a communist country as originally envisioned. Certainly, there are large disparities in income between the party elite/entrepreneurs and some random farmer.

That's true; however, to claim communism does not work whereas it works better than anything else is a little bit arrogant.

You're not offering any real evidence for your side, so it seems pretty arrogant to expect anyone to give you any credence. You claim it "works better than anything else," while citing a country that has brought a fraction of its population out of absolute squalor by abandoning communist ideology — that is very specious.