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I strongly feel like the best summary of the conditions that led to Xi's ascension are outlined in the book "The Party" by Richard McGregor. I did a book review in the SSC comments a few years back, but I'll do a summary here:

Basically - China pre-Xi wasn't a stable system. The patronage network you outlined in this piece has a serious downside: a newly-appointed paramount leader is necessarily at his absolute weakest in terms of influence at the time he is appointed leader. This is because a large part of being paramount leader is the ability to appoint a bunch of people into important positions who will back your agenda. If you're coming into a position where all the important spots were filled by your (likely ideologically-alienated) predecessor, you come in with not that much ability to accomplish much. Conversely, however, the time when you're most powerful as a leader is when you're right on the cusp of being kicked out of power. You've had time to solidify your reign and appoint a bunch of toadies.

Think of this as an exact inverse of the american system. Instead of a honeymoon "mandate" at the start of a term, the Chinese leader has more of a gradual ramp up. Instead of a lame duck period, they have a year or so of basically uncontested rule.

So... if a leader is most powerful right when they're about to get removed, why didn't someone hang onto power before Xi? Well, it's a mix of honest-to-god admiration of Dengism on the part of the former leaders and a shadowy network of retired party officials who still exerted significant sway and could, conceivably, have made life untenable for a would-be emperor. Unfortunately, that network had mostly disolved by the time Xi was facing the boot, so he didn't have to deal with it.

Mostly though, the previous chinese system didn't work. It really weakened the central government and was quickly losing ground to private industry. It was such a flawed system that reform was basically inevitable - either the party would reassert itself through a strong leader that was able to re-centralize power or it would be glasnosted.

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