CHINA'S GREAT LEAP FORWARD AND THE GREAT SPARROW CAMPAIGN

The Great Famine of 1958-1962, and the Cultural Revolution. Just one of Mao’s bright ideas during the Great Leap Forward: his plan to exterminate sparrows. He thought the sparrows consumed primarily grain, where in fact they consume a lot of insects. With the sparrows gone the locust population exploded, causing immense ecological damage.


The Great Leap ended in catastrophe, the exact number of famine deaths is difficult to determine, and estimates range from 18 to at least 42 million people. Because of the uncertainties involved in estimating famine deaths caused by the Great Leap Forward or any famine, it is difficult to compare the severity of different famines. 


However if a mid estimate of 30 million deaths is accepted, the Great leap Forward was the deadliest famine in the history of China and in the history of the world. This was in part due to China’s large population; in the Great Irish Famine, approximately 1 million of a population of 8 million people died, or 12.5%. In the Great Chinese Famine approximately 30 million of a population of 600 million people died, or 5%.

This problem was exacerbated by a devastating locust swarm, which was caused when their natural predators were killed as part of the Great Sparrow Campaign.

The campaign against the 'Four Pests' was initiated in 1958 as a hygiene campaign by Mao Zedong, who identified the need to exterminate mosquitoes, flies, rats, and sparrows. Sparrows – mainly the Eurasian Tree Sparrow– were included on the list because they ate grain seeds, robbing the people of the fruits of their labour. The masses of China were mobilized to eradicate the birds, and citizens took to banging pots and pans or beating drums to scare the birds from landing, forcing them to fly until they fell from the sky in exhaustion. Sparrow nests were torn down, eggs were broken, and nestlings were killed. Sparrows and other birds were shot down from the sky, resulting in the near-extinction of the birds in China.

By April 1960, Chinese leaders realized that sparrows ate a large amount of insects, as well as grains. Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased. Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with bedbugs in the ongoing campaign against the Four Pests.By this time, however, it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned,

swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides. Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine in which upwards of 30 million people died of starvation.


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