[10] The campaign officially began after the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued a "Directive on launching a struggle to cleanse out hidden counter-revolutionary elements" (關於開展鬥爭肅清暗藏的反革命分子的指示) on 1 July 1955.
Several top Party officials, notably the technocrats Gao Gang and Rao Shushi, were purged in the early stages of the campaign.
110,000 people were purportedly "exposed" as counterrevolutionaries, though Mao continued the campaign for a further two years in the belief that another 50,000 major suspects were still at large.
[10] 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.
[14] 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.
In 1952, he was ordered to Beijing to become head of the State Planning Commission of China (SPC), where he later attempted a leadership challenge against Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai.
"[13] According to Chinese researchers, government data (including Hu Qiaomu's figure) show that some 1.4 million intellectuals and officials were persecuted during the sufan movement.