  We present recent progress in the calculation of the helium fine-structure
splitting of the 2^3P_J states, based on the quantum electrodynamic theory.
Apart from the complete evaluation of m\alpha^7 and m^2/M\alpha^6 corrections,
we have performed extensive tests by comparison with all experimental results
for light helium-like ions and with the known large nuclear charge asymptotics
of individual corrections. Our theoretical predictions are still limited by the
unknown m\alpha^8 term, which is conservatively estimated to be 1.7 kHz.
However, comparison with the latest experimental result for the 2^3P_0 - 2^3P_2
transition [M. Smiciklas and T. Shiner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 123001 (2010)]
suggests that the higher-order contribution is in fact much smaller than the
theoretical estimate. This means that the spectroscopic determination of \alpha
can be significantly improved if another measurement of the 2^3P_0 - 2^3P_2
transition in helium-like Li^+ or Be^{2+} ion is performed.
