China is expected to surpass Japan and become the second largest economy in the world this year or the next. In the latest issue of Forbes magazine, China's President Hu Jintao is ranked the second most powerful person in the world after President Barack Obama of the United States.

The rapid increase of China's economic and cultural influence in the world is described by Societe Generale strategist Dylan Grice as similar to the rise of Japan in the 1980s, only much larger in scale. It represents not only the rise of a nation but a geopolitical shift of power from the West to the East.

Even Hollywood picked up the trend. In “2012,” the latest of a streak of apocalypse movies this year, the manufacturing might of China is credited for saving the human species.

In his new book, co-authored by his wife, “China's Megatrend,” John Naisbitt, the world's leading expert in futures studies and the author of the phenomenal “Megatrend” in 1982, suggested that China's success challenges Francis Fukuyama's theory that the triumph of Western democracy over communism was the “End of History,” the end point of socio-cultural evolution.

With a “vertical democracy” (as opposite to the “horizontal democracy” in the West), in which problems are addressed with both top-down and bottom-up approaches and a company culture, the Chinese government is able to focus on the work at hand, Naisbitt claimed, as opposed to Western democracies where long-term plans are often interrupted by election-driven politics.

Statistics seem to support Naisbitt's view so far. While most Western economies are still licking theirs wounds in the wake of the global financial meltdown, China is going to hit a 10 percent growth in the fourth quarter and will probably keep its annual growth rate at 8.3 percent, which is within the government's target of 8 percent.

However, what Naisbitt and the unending growth of the Chinese economy in the 21st century do not show is that the focus on success is actually China's Achilles' Heel.

Western democracies are perhaps more prone to failure, but they are also more resilient to it.

Regime changes resulting from democratic elections serve as a bloodless and moderate voice of confidence by the people. Success is not merely the path to a happy life for the Chinese people or to global influence for the Chinese government.

For China, success is a must. It is an existential fight for the communist party's continued rule over the country. As long as the party can keep making Chinese people rich, the people will care less about how they are ruled.

Beijing made a big mistake in last year's global economic crisis by linking the “eight percent target” to the stability of the county. It formalized the correlation between the stability (read existence) of the party's rule not just to economic success, but to an astonishingly big one of near double digit growth amid the greatest recession in generations. Success cannot last forever.

There will come a day when the Chinese government will need to justify its existence by means other than the country's economy might.

On the other hand, even if China's success is sustainable, it will jeopardize the rule of the communist party. For now, China's economic growth actually keeps its middle class from demanding democracy because these elites in coastal cities fear that giving power to billions of less well-off and less-educated people in rural areas will throw China into chaos and wipe out their wealth.

The more people China lifts above the poverty line, the more appealing democracy and self-determination will look to them.

That is where Taiwan comes in. Any success in cross-strait relations will be of extreme value to China's claim of legitimacy. A friendly tie with Taiwan will help keep the volume of secessionist opinions down within China's borders. By illustrating its ability to cooperate closely with Taiwan, the communist party earns its right to co-exist with a Westernized democracy.

Taiwan should recognize and value its strategic importance to China's future. Just as Taiwan needs the Chinese market to develop its economy, China needs Taiwan's democracy to market its legitimacy. Realizing such a relation, Taiwan can increase its clout at the negotiation table with China.