"What makes this so remarkable a phenomenon in the history of postrevolutionary societies is that the call for rebellion against the existing political order came from those who had built that order. It came from some among the veterans of the revolution-and Mao was certainly the most venerable and venerated of the veterans-who had created state and Party institutions they now had come to regard as obstacles to, rather than as instruments of, the revolutionary social changes they sought. But the more important question about the Cultural Revolution is not so much why Mao issued his rebellious call but rather why and how so many tens of millions of ordinary Chinese citizens responded to it."