Chris Patten says the 19th National Congress of China's Communist Party (CCP) came to an end this week, declaring Xi Jinping the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. Yet five years ago the 18th National Congress was overshadowed by the Bo Xilai scandal. This episode could have made a huge impact on Xi , which sought to explain the course of his actions during the first half of his leadership. It is worth taking a good look at the state of affairs in 2012 to have an insight into today's politics.

In January 2013 Alexis de Tocqueville's treatise - The Old Regime and the Revolution - became a "must-read" for the cadres. The French historian wrote his book in 1856, six decades after the French revolution. Some 150 years later, Chinese leaders wanted to look for guidance to this French thinker. That Wang Qishan, the man who led Xi's anti-corruption campaign and "perhaps Xi’s closest ally" recommended this book, seemed reveal the sense of crisis within the establishment.

The CCP was keen to learn from Tocqueville the causes of the French revolution by examining social conditions under the "old regime". The historian wrote that when the revolution broke out, the "old regime" under Louis XVI was at the height of its prosperity. But it fuelled also wealth inequality, leading to social unrest and revolution. He maintained that prosperity did not prevent a major revolution. It - on the contrary - help foment one.

China is the world's second-largest economy, with millions of its people being lifted from poverty. However income gap had widened between rich and poor, prompting Xi to fight poverty. He hopes to move some 250 million people from rural areas into cities, in an effort to improve their income. What might worry the leadership is Tocqueville's claim that the demise of the old regime did not bring France equality and democracy. After toppling the autocratic monarchy, socials ill resurfaced. The leaders fear for the price they would have to pay for political reforms, acknowledging that China's path to democracy -

if ever there is any - would be tortuous.

The waves of uprising that engulfed the Arab world in 2011 had been carefully watched in China. Despite restrictions on freedom of association and of speech, protest movements - against cronyism, corruption, social injustice, unemployment, land disputes and pollution etc. - have become pervasive in China. Tocqueville wrote that the danger of revolution is not greatest in the depths of poverty and despair, but when conditions have been improving - especially if some were better than than others.

Tocqueville also concluded that a regime with centralised power helped exacerbate social tensions. The political system in France before the French Revolution was not dissimilar to the one-party rule in today's China. For this reason the CCP urged its cadres to study th book. Perhaps Xi realises that the party's monopoly on power was behind China's widening wealth gap, rampant corruption and power abuse - all major sources of public discontent. He started to revamp the party ideology soon after he came to power.

The relevance of the old regime is obvious for China. Tocqueville's most discomforting warning was that the "most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform". The advice that reform could pose as much a danger as the crisis itself, would present the leaders with a dilemma, which could be summed up in a quip. The late Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek responded to his reformist son Chiang Ching-kuo's request during the civil war. "If we reform the Kuomintang, the party will perish; if we don't, the state will perish."

Economic growth legitimises the CCP's grip on power, yet Xi is reluctant to forge the badly-needed reforms to bring the country forward. He has said that China should avoid making the same mistake that Mikhail Gorbachev did with his glasnost and perestroika, which ushered in the demise of the Soviet Union. Xi may be willing to bring about changes, but he would like to do so incrementally, in a controlled manner. In this respect repression may be his prudent choice of action.