Communist Party powered by history? Why China's one-party rule is facing a legitimacy crisis
The party has shifted in justifying its rule since Mao spoke of democracy. Without a more durable basis for power, challenges loom
Some 3,000 years ago, the House of Zhou overthrew the Shang dynasty in the battle of Muye and became the new ruler of ancient China.
To justify its rule, the Duke of Zhou came up with the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, which holds that the divinity would unseat a bad ruler and bestow its mandate to a virtuous one. But the new king, whose legitimacy came from heaven, must have good conduct for it to continue endorsing his status as the rightful ruler.
"Heaven has torn the mandate from the Shang state and passed it to us. It will allow us to rule only if we carry on King Wen's [the first Zhou king] virtuous conduct," he said, according to the Book of Documents, one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature.
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Throughout Chinese history, new dynasties overthrew old ones and a successful revolt was interpreted as evidence that divine approval had passed onto a successive dynasty, who heaven appointed as the new, legitimate ruler.
In July 1945, four years before the Communist Party defeated the Kuomintang regime, politician Huang Yanpei from the progressive China Democratic League travelled to the party base at Yan'an . He met Mao Zedong and asked whether Mao thought the party could break the pattern of the rises and falls of regimes that dominated Chinese history. Mao reportedly said: "We have found the new path... it is called democracy."
After the party seized power, however, it turned to one-party rule. Its legitimacy has been repeatedly brought into question throughout its six-decade rule, especially during political upheavals such as the disastrous Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. And it is an issue that has continued to dog the leaders even to this day.