China - Eliminate Sparrows Campaign!除四害 Great Chinese Famine (ca. 1959-61)

 Peasants chasing sparrows during China’s Four Pests Campaign (除四害), the “pests” comprising mosquitoes, flies, sparrows, and rats. People would chase the birds around and make noise to keep them from resting or roosting until the birds eventually dropped and were killed. This was but one of the methods that were used to exterminate hundreds of millions of birds by the time the campaign was called off.

In theory, all this would keep the birds from eating grain. In practice, the birds would’ve eaten the insects who did, in fact, destroy the grain and helped launch the Great Chinese Famine (ca. 1959-61). 

Anywhere from 15 to 55 million Chinese died as a result of the ecological impact of the Eliminate Sparrows Campaign (消灭麻雀运动), as well as of the policies of the Great Leap Forward, the disastrous planned economy, and pressures to meet production goals. 

Mao Zedong ( Mao Tse Tung) was a great military leader, at least in the 1940s, and an influential political theoretician, but he sucked at running China’s economy and, for that matter, China, not to put too fine a point on it.