With regard to Bloomsby's post about when did the British Empire start to lose its influence.Are we now seeing the same with the USA?
The nineteenth century belonged to the British,the twentieth to the USA.Will the twentyfirst belong to China?

The Chinese! Surely they had their turn already 600bc-1700ad. (I just pulled those dates outta nowhere so don't jump on me). I think the US empire's got a ways to go yet, for better or worse. You never know we might get that Islamic empire yet. Failing that I reckon the first country that starts exploiting Antarctica might have a shot.

Fascinating question - but hard to answer at the moment, beyond repeating the old saying that 'nothing lasts for ever'. As for China, there's no golden rule that prevents a country enjoying immense power and influence only once. As for the period given above, I wonder how much power China had beyond East Asia at any stage in the past?

I'm sure the Chinese may ask a similar question regarding the Roman, British or "American" empires.
I'm sure there's a rule! It may not be golden but...

Nay,I don't think America is falling. Put it this way -China is rising. America rules. Our Sino brothers will have to go a long way to come even close to the height of Uncle Sam. Full marks to China, at least they have compelled us to reconsider US's supremacy.

Perhaps China will rise to be number one country. If it does it will only be because they have woken up to themselves [to a degree] and grasped the idea that communism is just an idealistic dream and not an achievable reality. China is currently undergoing a capitalistic driven market upsurge and when the idealogy of their leaders changes completely [they have only recently allowed individuals to benefit personally from their endeavours, I`m referring to millionaires not little shop owners] over to capitalism they will be in a great position to have another turn[for a while] at being the number 1 world power.
I don`t think the influence the US has over a great portion of the worlds countries is fading, but of course that will change in the future, as everything does.

Edited to correct title of thread

If you ask the Chinese, many of them will tell you that this is the century for China. A century is a long period so there's still plenty of time!

American influence in decline - not quite yet. Western culture, particularly American, is still prevalent in many parts of the world. If the question arises because there are now more countries and non-state actors challenging US decisions...that seems to be a different question from whether US influence is declining.

As for China's influence beyond East Asia in the past, the Silk Road extended all the way to the current day Middle East. Without it, people couldn't have traded for many prized Asian goods and spices. Also, if you believe Gavin Menzie (I believe he served in the navy under Queen Elizabeth) and his research/book, Chinese sailors reached the Americas decades before Columbus ever did and might have influenced the indigenous cultures.

No need for quotes, America is an empire. America has connections everywhere, so it would take a lot for China to catch up. As for China, any country with 1/5 of the globe's population scares the crap out of me. Their economy is expanding so rapidly, a collapse may be in the near future.

I hope American influence is not in decline. For better or for worse, America is the defender of freedom throughout out the world. I shudder to think about what may ooccur if a country like China becomes a dominant power. They may have reformed in past years, but I think the shadow of Mao Ze Dung is still over them. I mean, they are still communists, still miltant, and still quite dangerous. I agree with Ryan that China is so frightening because they are so massive. But I also worry about the Islamic countries. There are hundreds of millions of Muslims, and many have not been acting so friendly as of late.

Oh No! The Chinese are still Communist! Run for the hills!
What is this fear of communism? It's not a plague, it's a form of society which only fails in that it gives to muxh credit to human nature. There isnt anything evil about it at all.
Different doesnt mean bad.
And as for the hundreds of millions of frightening unfriendly muslims perhaps we should just barricade ourselves inside the nearest McDonalds and hope they all become peace loving christians.

Oops. Where does that quote come from? It would be useful to have the source.

It's contained in the post directly before my own! Aren't we allowed to respond to direct quotes then?

In that case your computer screen and mine are showing different things: on my screen only a small portion of what you give as a quote is contained in the post immediately above yours, aramis.

That's probably because the rest of the quote was Aramis' own reply, accidentally also enclosed in the [ quote] tags.

Yep, you're dead right Leau, the quote box contains my response as well as the portion of the quote to which I'd alluded.
My sincere apologies for any confusion!

Many thanks, Leau and aramis.

There is nothing wrong with Communism, Chinese or Russian or Cuban or whatever. The real problem is that true Communism theoretically has never been implemented. What we've seen in history - hence giving Communism such infamy - are corruptions of the idea. Such corruption tends to happen because of human nature; the Communist regimes we've seen were really dictatorships or oligarchies in the guise of supposed Communism. If anything, the fear should be directed at human nature and the corruption that comes with power rather than a underlying political regime.

As for China being very Communist - in name perhaps, but look at all the traditional capitalist institutions popping up and garnering widespread acceptance in China. McDonald's, KFC, fancy cars, plastic surgery, huge shopping malls, etc. are all rampant there. There is a huge income gap between the wealthy living in a place like Shanghai vs. a poor person living in rural Xinjiang - that is not and cannot be the feature of a truly Communist country.

I think all countries in Asia have learned from the bubble burst in Japan's economy since the 1990s, so it's doubtful China's economy will collapse in the near future. Millions of dollars are flowing into the country from across the globe, and China has almost endless resources and labor to provide.

Let's not forget India also has a huge population with lots of industry and manpower, not to mention nuclear capabilities as well. I suppose that means America's influence will inevitably decline as a result of many large and rapidly developing countries.

I reject the idea that there is "nothing wrong" with Communism. I didn't even look at the rest of the thread. That one statement stopped me cold.

For a start, Marx faked his research. The fact that he did so was proved shortly after Das Kapital was published. Marx' "scientific theories" are built on academic fraud.

Second, Marxism calls for revolution as a starting point. I don't know about you, but the idea of kicking off your new workers' paradise by killing people sounds a little off to me. Even better, when they're done killing people in your country, they want to encourage people in other countries to kill people so everybody can have a share of the fun. Gee, thanks, guys. Bad enough you screwed up your own country.

Third, Marxist cant then calls for a dictatorship. I'm not that comfortable with dictatorships, myself. Sure, it's supposed to wither away-- ever seen a state wither away? Me either. I'm no political scientist, but I have the sneaking suspicion that dictators won't one day decide they've had absolute power long enough and it's time to bake cookies with the masses. Some of those masses might be related to somebody the bosses had killed.

Fourth, every single time a country tries Communism on for size a bunch of people wind up dead. What was Stalin's body count? 43 million? Again, I don't know about you, but after that first couple million get whacked I get a little worried that maybe the idea isn't so good after all. I don't care if it was according to Hoyle Communism or not-- they're still dead and it was still in Marx' name. Not only that, but confrontations with the Soviet Communist dictatorship brought our race closer to extinction than any other times in history. My guess is the only reason they didn't push the button is because they were scared for their own hides-- the murdering scum had already proved they don't care about other humans.

Last, a few questions. What kind of moron is going to let the state decide everything for him? Would you really want your local collective deciding what career is right for you? What about where you live or even who you marry? Do you really think value is derived chiefly from labor and materials don't matter? Would workers really not care who owns the means of production? Do you think social workers, academics, and beaureacrats can plan something as complex as a national economy down to details? Why is it that every major prediction Marx and his followers have made turned out dead wrong? (That one's easy. They were idiots. The reason so-called "true Communism" didn't happen-- they said it was inevitable, you'll recall-- is because it is an unworkable fraud, the pursuit of which has killed millions. I'll take KFC, thanks anyway.)

I've had a chance to look over the thread now. US declining? Maybe, but I didn't exactly see anybody busting out a lot of evidence. From what I read in the papers China may be peaking. She's mostly getting the money from Americans anyway-- the US could shut her down whenever it seems necessary. Not to the mention that the Yanks would wipe the Pacific with her, militarially speaking.

That's a long post, hope somebody has the courtesy to read the whole thing.

I'll sum it up for you:

Marx was an academic fraud.
Communist revolutions kill people just as dead as other revolutions.
Communist revolutions invariably lead to dictatorship.
Then some more people die.
People who say there's nothing wrong with Communism obviously haven't thought about it.

I hope you made it this far! Thanks for reading!

Clearly saying there's nothing wrong with Communism is bordering on the absurd, there's something wrong with everything.
The main problem with Communism, in fact its fatal flaw, is that it either overlooks or overestimates human nature.
If we were all sweet caring and hard working, and all to the exact same degree communism wouldn't have to be enforced it would be a natural progression of human society.
However thats not how it is, were all different (insert Monty Python quote here), our motivations, ambitons, inspirations and desires are all varied either to a lesser or greater extent. Society has evolved around the fact we are all different and given us an essentially capitalist society, Granted various factors effect various societies underneath the umbrella of capitalism. Caste sytems, religious beliefs and so forth but at its core human societies allow for charesteristics of ambition and greed. Progression is possible.
Communism must involve "revolution" as it is an unnatural alteration in society. It must also be enforced, a lid placed on societies driving forces. Enforcing Communism in itself destroys Communism, it causes the formation of us and them.
Russia, China, Cuba, none of these societies are (or were) communist in anything but name. Perhaps they leaned toward the left, socialist maybe, Communist never. They tried the impossible and failed, the resulting society is to Communism what Reality tv is to reality.
If people have a problem with a brooding east asian nation, lets say China, lets not raise the communist boogeyman out of its cold war coffin. China has always been a dictatorship, the current one flys a red flag but the repression and human rights abuses that we see there through our western eyes have always been part of chinese society, it has nothing to do with communism.
Ah im rambling again, i better stop while i can.

An intriguing summation tester123 but it is only a set of assertions that you believe to be true. Why don't you post a cogent argument making the case for the conclusions you present in your summary? I think that would be much more interesting to read and we all might learn something from you.

Tester123, the posts previous to yours did not just state that there was nothing wrong with Communism.

Idealogically, Communism and Socialism are fine, and if Communist nations worked the way they are supposed to, it would be a perfectly acceptable form of government. However, Communism's weak point is its failure to be properly implemented. Because Communism is such an ideal system, and relies on the goodness of human nature, it is extremely vulnerable to being corrupted. Just read Animal Farm. If the world was full of Snowball's, Communism would succeed, but there unfortunately plenty of Napoleon's around.

As niveous pointed out, no country has ever truly been Communist. Dictatorship is certainly not a Communist ideal. If Trotskyist Communism had succeeded, I think we would have a more positive view of Communism today.