What gives legitimacy to the American government? Elections, majority rule through universal suffrage of a people, ever-larger shares of whom are ignorant of the faith, culture and civilization whence we came?
“Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and convictions wavered,” China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, told a closed meeting of party elite in Guangdong province.
“Finally all it took was one quiet word from Gorbachev to declare the dissolution of the Soviet Communist Party, and a great party was gone,” said Xi, according to notes obtained by The New York Times.
“Everyone is talking about reform, but in fact everyone has a fear of reform,” said Chinese historian Ma Jong. “The question is: Can society be kept under control while you go forward? That is the test.” That is indeed the test.
What is it that gives a party its legitimacy, its right to rule? What holds a nation together when its cradle faith, its founding ideology, has been abandoned by both elites and the people? That is China’s coming crisis.
With victory in the civil war with the Nationalists in 1949, Mao claimed to have liberated China from both Japanese imperialists and Western colonialists, and restored her dignity. “China has stood up!” he said.
His party’s claim to absolute power was rooted in what it had done, and also what it must do. Only a party with total power could lead a world revolution. Only an all-powerful party could abolish inequality in a way that made the French Revolution look like a rebellion at Berkeley.
Xi Jinping’s problem? The Cold War is over. China is herself in the capitalist camp, a member of the G-8, and inequality in the People’s Republic resembles that of America in the Gilded Age.
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