Ends to a Mean

I may be completely wrong here, and you can call me on it if I am, but to me it seems as if there are different "ends" in relation to the same goal (if that makes any sense) that are being met in these two instances.  Yes, they are both coming in a time when China is being reformed; out with the old and in with the new, seems to be a consistent theme for both of these cases but the different instances seem to be different ways of getting rid of the old and in with the new.

In the first excerpt, changes had already been made in terms of land distribution, and it seemed that the people were being turned against the old powers/older landlords.  These people had been an important official for some time, and as you could see, nobody wanted to strike the person at first.  With more prodding though, one after another rose up to be able to take down the official thus thrusting the area into a new age, with new different powers.

In the second example, the Red Guards are revolting against the old, by also destroying everything old, but this time, more in the form of things, and laws that were being held in the house.  To me it seemed as if they seemed to have the air of "Oh of course we can do this," as they made it clear that they were revolting.  

In both cases, there didn't seem to be any opposing force to these two groups destroying the old order. What little resistance for the second example was in the example of saying that it was against the Constitution, but that was quickly put down by saying that there was no Constitution anymore, as the person should be able to see from the revolt.  

I say ends to a mean because it seems like there is already an, at least partially, reformed China, and that these two events happened because there was a change going on.  So even though these were helping the change along, there was already a change in the making, which was probably what caused these events in the first place.