More than a century and a half after it was published, Alexis de Tocqueville's "The Old Regime and the Revolution" has become an unlikely best-seller in China.
Wang Qishan, China's anti-corruption czar, is reportedly among the senior leaders obsessed with what he sees as the book's cautionary message: that increasing prosperity and piecemeal political reform didn't protect France's pre-revolutionary regime from violent overthrow.
The mass energies unleashed by large-scale industrialization and urbanization have exposed China's existing political institutions as weak and inadequate. In Wang's reading of Tocqueville, Chinese leaders must prepare for more upheaval ahead.