The designation is not a formal title and does not hold legal weight, but its use in official party documentation gives its holder a precisely defined place in theory on their relative standing to the rest of the CCP leadership.
The leadership core operates as part of the Leninist concept of democratic centralism, and is intended to represent a vital center rather than a hierarchical peak, which differentiates it from the role of paramount leader.
After Mao died in 1976, his successor as party chairman, Hua Guofeng, was unable to build a strong coalition of support in spite of having a wide range of official titles.
Deng Xiaoping emerged as the pre-eminent leader of China in 1978, and was indisputably the highest authority in the country throughout the 1980s even though he held only one formal government post, that of chairman of the Central Military Commission.
The term "core", which invoked a concentric, non-hierarchical image, was a clever political innovation that avoided designating any individual as "supreme" and "above the rest".
[citation needed] Jiang had stacked the Politburo Standing Committee, which made decisions based on consensus, with his own allies, constraining Hu's authority.
By 2016, his pre-eminent status became widely understood and many provincial party chiefs began declaring fealty to him and again invoking the term "leadership core".