Let's put aside the fact that China - where inequalities attain explosive levels and mass protests average 500 per day - can hardly be a source of emulation.
The key problem to be addressed with regard to China is whether a one-party system is suited to take the No. 1 place in today's world.
The fragility and limits of the Chinese model have been recognized by China's own Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who declared in 2008 that China's economy is "unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable." What Wen didn't say, presumably because he didn't realize it, is that the cause of China's fragility lies in the fact that the Communist Party of China tries to substitute for the market in the allocation of the country's resources. Under such circumstances, the potential for economic blunders is close to infinity.
What is more, unable to foster ingenuity through freedom of expression, one-party China is content with copying technology developed abroad and ensuring a competitive edge in manufactured goods by keeping wages low. That, for certain, does not and cannot nowadays make a hegemon.
Let there be no ambiguity: everything on this Earth is destined to pass away and America's supremacy is not an exception to this rule. But as long as it is in the U.S. where free entrepreneurship leads to the establishment of Silicon Valley and the blossoming of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, et al. (while in autocracies the people have to constrict their views according to party lines), as long as stealth fighters, drones and anti-missile shields are invented in America, and, last but not least, as long as individuals wishing to express their talents and industriousness choose to migrate to the U.S. (while those seeking to cash in social-welfare payments have a preference for other destinations), the fall of American supremacy will remain outside the realm of imminence.
