Mao's The Great Sparrow Campaign

1958 in China. That was the year that Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People's Republic of China, decided that his country could do without pests like sparrows. It was called “The four pests” campaign. The goal was to eradicate 4 pests in China that Mao Zedong considered to be an enemy of the people. These four pests were : The mosquito which spread malaria, the rat which spread plague, the fly which spread other diseases and the sparrow which ate the grain of the peasants.

Out of these four, only one campaign was totally effective in its goal of eradicating its pest : The Eurasian Tree  Sparrow. The Chinese government, at the request of Mao spent a significant sum of money encouraging and advertising to the peasants that killing the pests would make the country better. 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.

The problem with the Great Sparrow Campaign became evident in 1960. The sparrows, it seemed, didn't only eat grain seeds. They also ate insects. With no birds to control them, insect populations boomed. Locusts, in particular,swarmed over the country eating everything they could find — including crops intended for human food. People, on the other hand, quickly ran out of things to eat, and millions starved. Numbers vary, of course, with the official number from the Chinese government placed at 15 million. The deaths of the sparrows were not the only contributing factor to the famine, murders and deaths. For one thing, there was a massive drought in 1960. For another, the central government instituted new agricultural practices that proved to be complete failures. At the heart of it, the real cause was the Communist government, which — either as policy or by the selfish act of various officials — kept the grain from being delivered to those in need and covered up the problem. They also ruthlessly, sadistically and brutally detained, beat and hunted down anyone who appeared to question the situation. China has continuously played down the causes and effects of the Great Famine, which is still officially known as the "Three Years of Difficult Period" or "Three Years of Natural Disasters." Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which between 20–45 million people died of starvation. This is what happens when despots start tinkering with the environment.