The Cost of Stability Maintenance in China

Unlike democratic societies that are inherently stable, China under the CCP's totalitarian regime is inherently unstable.  To maintain its power, the CCP has to spend a tremendous amount of resource on stability maintenance.

It is impossible to calculate the total cost of the stability accurately because the stability maintenance is the #1 job at all levels of the regime, so the regime throws in whatever resource that is needed for stability maintenance (e.g. crackdown of spreading facts on Internet, house arrests of activists, suppressing demonstrations, etc.). There are full time jobs for stability maintenance as well as part time ones spread among all government agencies.  For example, the minimum cost of Chen Guangcheng's house arrest is about $10 million/yr. 

The cost of stability maintenance (> $100 billion) has most likely exceeded the defense budget of China.  It is just another heavy cost of maintaining a totalitarian regime that people have to shoulder.