The roughly 3,000 delegates of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, voted almost unanimously on Sunday to end a two-term limit on the presidency, one of the main leadership posts held by Xi Jinping. While the overwhelming approval by the party-controlled congress was not a surprise, the repercussions go beyond just allowing Mr. Xi to stay on longer.

Here’s what is at stake, and why ending the term limit matters.

Why is the limit in place now?

One lesson that China drew from the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution was the danger of concentrating power in one supreme, unassailable leader who ruled for life.

In 1982, when China was recovering from that chaotic era, lawmakers approved a new Constitution that said the president and also the vice president “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms.”

It is sometimes said that Deng Xiaoping, who led China after Mao, introduced the term limit to prevent the top leader from again becoming too powerful. But that’s not entirely true. Back then the Chinese presidency was not such a powerful post. Deng wielded much of his power informally, without titles or term limits, and through his control of the military.