The center of economic reform proposals in 1956–1957 was the coalition of interests associated with the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Ministry of Agriculture. The leaders of these and other bureaucracies articulated a series of policies from late 1956 into 1957 that if sustained over time (and implemented reasonably effectively) would have changed China from a centrally planned, Soviet-style economy to one that combined market and planned elements. The priority for heavy industry and the high levels of investment in metallurgical and machine building industries associated with centrally planned economies would have been lessened, and more attention would have been devoted to consumer goods, agriculture, and consumption levels. It is not possible to determine whether a true market socialist economy would have developed in China as a result of these reforms. Yet this was the direction in which Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, and other ranking figures were pushing China's political economy.

The financial, or budgeteer, coalition sought both to circumscribe and to undermine the power of planning and heavy industry in the Chinese economy, and to constrain the ability of political generalists to intervene in economic decision making. Changes in rules, procedures, and patterns of policy making were all part of the financial coalition's reform proposals. In its efforts to limit interventions by nonspecialists, this group received support from the planning coalition and from a number of top leaders.