Does China and Russia have what NASA wants?

Post Columbia and the recent launch of China's first man into orbit,
it seems like NASA and the Coorperate Aerospace America has
fundamental problems. Already after Challenger, and again now, NASA
has been told to develop new means to transport people to space. The
results of this new plan finaly adressed, seems to be a Soyuz,
alltough NASA will make substantial cosmetic changes to the craft to
not be a pure copy of the Russian/Chineese variant. Additionaly the
taxpayers of America can expext to pay 10 B$ for this "evoulution". It
is tempting, when considering NASA's plans for human space
transportation, to consider China almost a decade ahead, and close to
an order of magnitude more efficient.

Sincerely
Bjørn Ove