There's probably no way to know whether, in the end, history will judge China's current leaders as more like the long-enduring Qing Emperors or the doomed Nationalists of the mid-to-late 1940s. Either is possible. For now, China's Communist Party has disproven observers who have predicted its imminent demise for years. Surprisingly adaptable and self-consciously diagnostic, the regime seems keenly aware of the precedents of history, both in China and internationally.

The Qing dynasty, as the Communist Party seems to see it, was too weak in the face of foreign pressure and failed to suppress disgruntled sectarian networks, including the anti-Manchu sworn brotherhoods (or "secret societies") that participated in the 1911 Revolution. Four decades later, the Nationalists failed to quash their political opposition. As for the Leninist states of Central and Eastern Europe whose falls Beijing so assiduously studies, they never managed to raise living standards as they'd promised.

The history-minded, stability-obsessed Communist Party's hold on power thus seems less mysterious when viewed in this historical context. And some of its actions, such as the paranoid and draconian 1999 crackdown on Falun Gong, seem less surprising.

Still, not all of the CCP's efforts have been so defensive in nature. The Party has also made some positive changes, such as loosening controls on private life, helping boost living standards, and raising China's global influence, all of which have likely made it easier for Chinese citizens to tolerate or even support the Party's rule.

The Party is talented at adapting incrementally, changing course a bit at a time. This can work for a while, even a long while, but that doesn't mean it can go on indefinitely. Both of the CCP's two most recent predecessors, struggling to maintain their legitimacy, eventually attempted their own complete reinvention. In the early 1900s, the Qing dynasty, in a failed bid to outrun the forces of revolution from within, abolished the Confucian examinations that legitimized it for more than two centuries and tried to reinvent itself as a constitutional monarchy. Taiwan, under Nationalist control from the late 1940s on, began its transformation into a thriving democracy under the watch of Chiang Kai-shek's son. Today, a Party president rules Taiwan not as a dictator but as an elected official.

China's military is presently powerful enough and its diplomacy stable enough that the Communist Party faces no realistic threats from outside. Internally, its control over society is effective enough that, while unrest and discontent may be widespread, there are neither well-organized opposition parties nor rebellious armies that might seriously challenge the central government. For now, the Communist Party finds itself in a position that would be enviable to the officials of the late Qing. It could, if it wished, reinvent itself with a new legitimizing narrative, or even open the way to a new multiparty political structure as the Nationalists did in Taiwan, likely without fear of being overthrown in the process. If it does not make such changes, however, then it seems likely that the corruption and internal dissent of today will continue to mount. If that happens, then it is likely only a matter of time until that dissent and corruption reach a critical mass necessary to end the regime. But, as the world learned from the late Lord Macartney's failed prediction, those processes can take many generations longer than we might expect. Even if the Communist Party's legitimacy does weaken enough for the party to fall, it might not be in any of our lifetimes.

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