Yet the popularity of Tocqueville's work suggests that this is precisely what it now fears. ''Is China ripe for another revolution?'' poses Wiest. Among the many passages that must send chills down the spine of China's dictators is the French historian's famous remark that the outbreak of France's violent upheaval was ''so inevitable, yet so completely unforseen''. And Tocqueville's 1856 prediction that the French Revolution ''for many years to come will trouble the sleep of all who seek to demoralise the nation and reduce it to a servile state,'' seems to be vindicated. ''In all likelihood, these leaders sense, either instinctively or intellectually, an impending crisis that could imperil the Chinese Communist Party's survival in the same way that the French Revolution ended Bourbon rule,'' writes a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in the US, Minxin Pei. ''Telltale signs of anxiety are already visible. Capital flight from China is now at a record high. Polls of China's dollar millionaires reveal that half of them want to emigrate.

''It is safe to say that China's next leader knows that the Celestial Kingdom is becoming unsettled.'' China's outgoing president explicitly spoke of the danger of upheaval last week in his so-called work report to the National Congress, the body that is to endorse the preordained line-up of the new national leadership, to be revealed on Thursday. Speaking of rampant corruption, Hu Jintao told the congress: ''If we fail to handle this issue well, it could prove fatal to the party and even cause the collapse of the party and the fall of the state.'' In which other major country could the national leader warn of the collapse, not only of the ruling party, but of the state itself, in the same breath? Other countries can discuss the fall of a political party without fearing the collapse of the state. Only in China are the two interchangeable. This raises the cost to China of any possible upheaval.

So what does Tocqueville have to say about pre-revolutionary conditions in France in 1789 that could be relevant to China in 2012? Weren't the French peasantry desperately impoverished, where modern Chinese have enjoyed rising wealth and improving living conditions? No. Tocqueville wrote that, contrary to impressions, the peasantry had enjoyed rising prosperity in the approach to revolution. ''It was precisely in those parts of France where there had been most improvement that popular discontent ran highest.'' This is Tocqueville's paradox. Rising living standards are no guard against unrest but can be a precursor to it. Tocqueville writes of a festering popular resentment at the privileges of the elites, at their feckless pursuit of self-gain. He observes ''the steady growth among the people of two ruling passions.'' One was ''an intense, indomitable hatred of inequality.'' Inequality in China today is at its greatest since the revolution.

The other was ''a desire to live not only on an equal footing but also as free men.'' How strong is this in modern China? There are an estimated 500 protests, riots and strikes every day in China, according to Chinese sociologists, four times the number of a decade ago. So what should the party do? There is a feverish amount of work under way to seek an answer. There are many people writing internal papers on what level of economic, political and financial reform the party needs to undertake, says the director of the China in the world centre at the Australian National University, Geremie Barme. ''It's a relatively closed system but it's an open market for ideas - that's the contradiction of today's China.'' But the message from the outgoing President Hu gives no hint of this. Quite the contrary. An expert on China's elite politics, Willy Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says: ''If you read Hu's speech last week, which is the consensus of the current leadership and the incoming one, it's a reassertion of conservative core values - 'the party must pull out all stops to preserve the monopoly of the party on power.''' ''It's highly unlikely that Xi [the incoming president Xi Jinping] will be able to achieve any political reform, at least in his first five-year term.'' The two top priorities of the new leadership will be to resume the momentum of economic growth, Lam says, and ''think of ways to blunt Obama's Asian pivot'', the US President's policy of throwing extra military and diplomatic resources and attention into the Asia-Pacific.

But surely this is the very time China's leaders need to pursue political liberalisation to ease the building tensions that have led to parallels with pre-revolutionary France? Not necessarily. Tocqueville wrote: ''Experience teaches us that, generally speaking, the most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long period of oppression, he sets to improving the lot of his subjects.'' In warning of pre-revolutionary conditions, Tocqueville counsels against efforts to redress through reforms. He diagnoses the condition, yet warns against attempting a cure. This is exactly China's conundrum. As the ANU's Barme remarks: ''I'm sure the spectre of Tocqueville hangs heavy over China today.'' Peter Hartcher is the international editor.