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.

In the dynastic days, the bureaucrats collected taxes and kept part of the money in exchange for providing 'pastoral care to their flock'. But today's communist cadres collect money merely as 'rent' for holding office. The communist bureaucrats are too busy collecting capital to read Karl Marx's Das Kapital, so they know nothing about the moral economy.

In Confucianism, life is seen as a series of events, rather than a coherent whole moving towards a transcendental end. Thus, the only power it could provide for the guidance of human conduct is familial piety based on a belief in ancestral spirits. If the people's primary duty is towards specific human beings, living or dead, a political class whose legitimacy is inherited would find little to stop them abusing their power.

In China, crony capitalism has prevailed along with office usury, profits from wholesale trade, and even manipulation of the financial system, such as an ability to attract private investment funds. When personal wealth comes mainly from bureaucratic offices, the acquisitive behaviour of the party functionaries alone does not necessarily lead to reforms that elicit modern capitalism. Such is the nature of 'socialism in Chinese characteristics'. Under the circumstances, no viable theodicy can work in a system that is still dominated by Confucian ethics.

Therefore, when the different dimensions of legitimacy are challenged at the same time, we could envision a widespread social protest that could bring about a perfect storm in rapid sequence.

Of course, a perfect storm is probable, but not inevitable. To avoid such an eventuality, the Communist Party has no choice but to launch political reforms, even if they are limited ones. Dealing with official corruption would be a popular move, but without political decentralisation, the vested interest groups now deeply entrenched in Chinese society would be extremely hard to crack.

There is no doubt that China has one of the highest Gini index figures, a widely accepted measurement of income distribution gap. The so-called Pareto optimal condition, in which the majority of Chinese benefited from reforms in the early days despite the income gap, has to be sustained by 8 per cent of gross domestic product growth every year. That scenario is no longer sustainable.

In fact, political expediency alone would dictate that political power is delegated more widely, so that the blame now shouldered by the central government can be spread thinner and political pressure can be reduced.

Some form of political pluralism will function as a decompression valve, as the state's job becomes increasingly more complicated in this age of economic globalisation.

Lanxin Xiang is professor of international history and politics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva