Getting a bit off-topic, but I also wanted to take the time here to talk about the mandate of heaven (天命), an old concept of Chinese political philosophy. I think it's a good precursor to the modern Chinese understanding of democracy and the legitimacy of governments.
The mandate of heaven is a concept that was invented to explain why imperial dynasties rise and fall. It essentially states that a dynasty has divine favour and a mandate to rule if it rules in a manner that is fair and just, and benefits the people. When a dynasty becomes corrupt and unjust in its rule, the mandate of heaven will be withdrawn and the people will revolt against it, and a new dynasty will rise up and replace it.
The concept is inherently steeped in traditional Chinese religious practices and beliefs which mostly are no longer relevant today. But I think that the mandate of heaven is nothing more than a religious way of spelling out the concept of popular sovereignty. When a dynasty rules for the benefit of the people, it enjoys the mandate from heaven. In modern political thought, we understand that a government instead derives from the people directly. But other than that, it's the same thing.
The Communist Party claimed its mandate during the Chinese Civil War when it overthrew the old dynasty (Chiang Kai-Shek) and established a new one (Mao Zedong). And as long as it continues to enjoy popular support, it has that mandate to rule. I do note that notwithstanding all of this text, both men would have found it insulting to be referred to as the leaders of a dynasty. But what was then called a dynasty is now called a republic. The fact that the post of chief of state, be it emperor, president, or general secretary, is no longer hereditary, has no bearing on the fundamental nature of it.
In China, they still of course describe it in broad strokes as political power belonging to the people. But when one presses deeper into it, it becomes apparent that unlike in Western liberal democracies where people can exercise that power through elections, Chinese people can't. So they instead say things like, "Well, we have people's democracy here, it works differently".
Here's a video I found which was on top of the Baidu Baike (百度百科) article on 民主: https://baike.baidu.com/video?collectionId=0&from=lemma&fromIndex=0&fromModule=lemma_top&fromPage=lemmaTop&isSensitive=0&lemmaId=291141&nid=15108339075742377209
It discusses the differences between Western electoral democracy and Chinese democracy, and the perceived shortcomings of the former.
I found his explanation of democracy in China to be reflective of fairly typical views of how people think China is a democratic country. And he uses the term 人民民主 ("people's democracy", to any non-Chinese reading this) to describe it. His examples are a farmer suggesting a welfare policy that is adopted by the Party and a food delivery driver calling the 12345 complaint hotline to get signposts replaced. To a Western viewer these are nonsensical examples of democracy; they're basic examples of the government responding to people's demands for public services. But apparently because Chinese democracy works this way, that makes it the "most effective, most genuine, most functional" form of "socialist democracy".