The ostensible aims of the Sufan campaign were the defeat of so-called "bureaucratism" within government organisations, the generation of revolutionary fervor and the eradication of purported counterrevolutionaries within the state. Alternatively, as one writer suggests, the campaign was intended to crush opponents of the socialist transformation of industry and commerce. It was effectively a reaction by Mao against the rise of a technocratic bureaucracy dominated by pro-Soviet officials, following the implementation of China's Soviet-inspired First Five-Year Plan from 1953 onwards. Mao saw the new technocratic ethos in China's administration as a corruption of the "revolutionary spirit". The officials responsible were cast as "functional bourgeoisie" whose power was based on their bureaucratic authority rather than private property. Gao Gang became a particular target for his embrace of Soviet methods of industrial organisation in Manchuria; he was purged after being accused of attempting to run "an independent kingdom".
