From the Han period the long becomes attached to the throne, and this is where its social weight lies.
The emperor sat on a dragon throne, wore a dragon robe, and his face was the dragon countenance; the association is strong enough that dynastic legitimacy could be argued through dragon portents. By the later imperial period the number of claws had become a matter of regulation, with the five-clawed long reserved to the emperor and lesser numbers permitted to nobles and officials by rank. Unauthorised use was an offence. This is a creature embedded in sumptuary law, which is not a situation any European dragon ever found itself in.
The long is also one of the four directional animals in some schemes, the Azure Dragon of the east and of spring, paired with the White Tiger of the west, the Vermilion Bird of the south and the Dark Warrior of the north, a set with astronomical as well as symbolic content, since each names a quadrant of the sky and the lunar mansions within it.
It pairs with the fenghuang to signify emperor and empress, and yang with yin.
Its modern life is undiminished. It is the fifth animal of the zodiac, the centrepiece of the dragon dance at new year, the object of dragon boat racing, and a general emblem of Chinese identity, with Chinese people describing themselves as descendants of the dragon. Very few mythological creatures anywhere are still doing this much work, and none of it is work a European dragon could do.