In his early revolutionary days, Mao Zedong famously said that a single spark could start a prairie fire. He was referring to the unstoppable nature of a revolutionary movement. Today, the phrase is often used by Chinese elites who are worried about social instability. It may be an exaggerated fear, but the current Chinese system is ill-equipped to deal with domestic unrest.
The recent popular revolt in the Middle East, the 'jasmine revolution', indicates that a single spark could indeed start a fire when a state system invests too many resources in 'maintaining stability' instead of tackling the roots of social problems. The announcement last week of the national budget in Beijing reveals that, for the first time in its history, the publicly stated budget to 'maintain stability' surpassed the defence budget. Yet, society is becoming less and less stable. Popular anger about the huge income gap and official corruption plays a key role in all the current revolts in authoritarian states, but the Chinese communist regime is facing bigger problems than its Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan counterparts.
The reason is simple. The Chinese Communist Party's survival depends on three dimensions of political legitimacy: revolutionary credit, the moral character of the leaders and actual performance. And all three could be challenged in the near future.
First of all, the previous generations of leaders could still invoke the image of the heroic Long March and the revolutionary struggle to make a direct claim on the right to govern; future leaders, especially the 'princelings' who have been chosen to take power next year, could no longer do so. The new generation who have contributed nothing to the revolution cannot govern China through the revolutionary credit inherited from their fathers.
Secondly, the princelings - the descendants of the first generation of revolutionaries - as a group have demonstrated little Confucian virtues, for they have obtained the biggest slice of the national wealth through power play rather than hard work.
Thirdly, this fifth generation of leaders will inherit an economy that may reach its peak point soon and will begin to slow or even halt, as history shows that no national economy can sustain unfettered growth forever. Thus, they may have trouble fulfilling the demand for performance necessary for political legitimacy.
In the dynastic era, the emperor was the 'son of heaven'. Still, his holy charisma had to be proved by the welfare of his subjects and his ability to guarantee order and harmony. Leaders who relied on revolutionary credit would have found the credit that accrued from a dynastic change generally lasted no more than two generations. The princelings' mistake was to try to revive their revolutionary credit, as Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai has done in promoting revolutionary legitimacy through singing 'red' songs. After all, the 'red culture' movement needs to be sustained by ideological thinking. But China has become a faithless country, and official ideology and revolutionary idealism are things of the past. More importantly, the effort to invoke revolutionary heroes has only deepened popular mistrust of the system, as the princelings' behaviour and lifestyle are in sharp contrast to those of the comparatively ascetic heroes.