I think it's a byproduct of a deep cultural thing. In East Asian countries, there's a strong culture of respecting your elders. In China, it seems this sometimes manifests in a peculiar way where people getting older start to act as if they're entitled to unconditional respect and they abuse the heck out of it (abusing the heck of unspoken gray areas also appears to be another chinese cultural peculiarity). "I had to put up with my elders, now it's your turn to put up with me" is a pretty accurate summary of how some people seem to think/act.

My mother-in-law is quite a reasonable and well respected person (she was a teacher and gets gifts from ex-students to this day, and she doesn't even live in China anymore), but the fights my wife has gotten into with her due to this "respect for elders" thing are... something else.

The whole dynamic reminds me of a tradition in Brazil where senior students in universities play pranks on new students. The general gist is that pranks can be pretty nasty (getting your head shaved and your face covered in paint is standard fare treatment and things just get worse from there), and the tradition gets passed on in a "now it's my turn to be nasty" sort of way. Predictably, things can and have gotten out of hand on several occasions and pretty much everyone knows of at least one urban legend/story of someone drowning or getting seriously injured in some other way. Unsurprisingly, some schools ban these pranks, not unlike these regulations you mentioned.

People will be people, I guess.