As China's Communist Party approaches its 18th Congress later this year, the outgoing and incoming leaders are well aware that they have an increasingly critical problem of political legitimacy.
But their problem is that they are the problem.
More precisely, what was once a government motivated by ideals of social justice - albeit often brutally perverted in their implementation - has tumbled into becoming a kleptocratic oligarchy by which China is ruled by a few score deeply corrupt and vastly wealthy families.
From this inner network of so-called "princelings," the children and close relatives of senior party officials and those with royal bloodlines to the founding fathers of the 1949 Communist revolution, corruption has spread throughout Chinese society.
It is the bane of the daily lives of China's 1.3 billion people who must bribe officials for every public service from school places for their children to acquiring a driving licence or a hospital bed for a sick relative.
World Bank estimates of the cost of corruption put it at about three per cent of gross domestic product each year, or $200-billion in China's $7-trillion economy.
It is highly unlikely that an aristocracy whose wealth and very survival depend on holding on to power is capable of reforming itself.
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