Do you know who else has a 4,000 year history of instability, even greater instability? Europe. The height of centralized political stability in Europe was the Roman Empire, or maybe Napoleon. Yet you don't hear many Europeans saying "We need to bring back the Roman Empire", or "We need to bring back Napoleon". China values social stability because they have a dictatorship for whom social stability is a convenient idea to push. Ironically, the last serious bout of instability was the Cultural Revolution, which was a entirely a product of conflicts within the dictatorship.