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The academic debate on international hegemony is more present than ever. Chi-na is already the first country in GDP measured at current international prices, so it is worth asking whether the Asian country can become the new hegemon, replacing the role played by the United States since World War II. That question has become more relevant since, in 2018, the start of the trade and tech-nology war between the two countries. The importance of the debate is crucial, since, to a large extent, hegemony in the international system implies a great influence on the trade, technological, eco-nomic, and financial rules in which countries, companies and consumers operate. Specifically, in the current dispute between China and the United States, technological leadership has become the main area of conflict. For Vlados and Xuetong this is due to the importance that the IV Industrial Revolution will have: the coun-try that dominates the rules and the creation of new technology will have a great advantage over the rest. This context would not be new, as historically changes in hegemonies are accompanied by major technological changes However, the debate is far from closed (Ikenberry and Nexon, 2019). For authors such as Jacques, Lee or Mahbubani, China will play a key role as a potential hegemon, while Nye, Starss or Schwartz point out that US hegemony remains strong, and that China's weight has been overestimated. However, most studies on the issue are descriptive and theo-retical, limited to a comparison of attributes and aggregates of national econo-mies such as GDP size. This fact reveals both a theoretical and empirical problem, since in classical theories of hegemony, power is conceived in the leadership of indicators such as industrial production, trade volume and GDP, which are closely associated with the study of China's rise. This fact has been criticized by various authors , pointing out that comparing attributes in isolation does not allow showing the power and influence of a country in the world. Thus, there are limitations to measuring hegemony and, indeed, to studying whether China has the potential to replace the role of the United States. Even if the world system is moving towards a more distributed or multipolar power struc-ture. Similarly, the literature also fails to provide us with empirical evidence on the patterns of growth and decline of each country's influence in the world. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the hegemony debate between the United States and China by presenting an approach and methodology to measure the in-fluence of countries in the world system and the growth patterns of this influence. Specifically, technology hegemony will be analyzed through the flows of patents between countries, which make it possible to measure the technological diffusion of a given country in the world. Leaders in innovation are those that obtain the most patents on an international scale, imposing the use of their technology. That a country's technology is hegemonic implies an advantage when it comes to establishing the technological rules and consolidating itself in the high value-added segments of the global value chain The methodology used is network analysis, as it allows obtaining a view of the system as a whole and observing the position of each country. The study of the patent network shows the patterns of growth of the network and its evolution, elucidating what has to happen for one country or another to increase its power in the future. For example, the network as a whole can reward the previous position of each country in the network (rich get richer) or countries can boost themselves through their individual good performance regardless of their previous position (fit get richer) These mechanisms allow us to observe whether the evolution of China and the United States will imply succession in the future. On the other hand, patent flows and the centrality of countries in the network will be studied. The more central a country is, the more influence it has on the rest and, therefore, the more power it has. This power can be considered hegemonic when the distance from the others is continuous over time. Consequently, it is possible to measure the situation of the United States as well as to observe wheth-er there are alternatives to its hegemony. Among the main results, the hegemony of the United States remains strong. Chi-na's technological growth has enabled it to become a major power, but it is far from being able to replace the United States. The systematic functioning of the network indicates that positions of influence and centrality are reinforced, strengthening the situation of countries with a better position (rich get richer) and preventing better individual behavior (fit get richer) from overcoming the structur-al mechanisms. This implies that, despite the exception of China's growth, the po-sition of the United States is unlikely to deteriorate in the future.