ABSTRACT
From the founding of the PRC up to the Cultural Revolution elite behavior in China was guided by a relatively well defined set of organizational norms. Although these norms began to erode during the Great Leap Forward and subsequent years, they still functioned however imperfectly in 1965. Mao Zedong, who made these understandings an integral part of his leadership in the early 1940s, reaffirmed them on numerous occasions in the 1950–65 period. Nevertheless, it was Mao’s actions in the years preceding the Cultural Revolution which gravely weakened the norms, and his decision which shattered them in 1966.
