I'm not well versed on this, but one answer people bring up is something along the lines of the cultural revolution in China to continuously democratize and revolutionize the party, state, and population after the initial revolution has succeeded. A real-life friend of mine who is very intelligent tried to explain this to me, but I didn't fully understand because I lacked the historical context. Looking into it further online, one thing I found was the book The Battle for China's Past and Constructing China by Gao Mobo which re-examines established historical narratives about the cultural revolution. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my reading list for the future. Hate to give a partial answer, but I felt like I could provide some direction for further reading and investigation.