Four Pests Campaign

The Great Sparrow Campaign (Chinese: ; pinyin: ), also known as the Kill a Sparrow Campaign (Chinese: ; pinyin: ) and, officially, as the Four Pests Campaign, was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows resulted in severe ecological imbalance, prompting Mao to end the campaign against sparrows and redirect the focus to bed bugs.

The "Four Pests" campaigns was introduced in 1958 by Mao Zedong, as a hygeine campaign aimed to eradicate the pests responsible for the transmission of pestilence and disease: the mosquitos responsible for malaria; the rodents that spread the plague; the pervasive airborne flies; and the sparrows – specifically the Eurasian tree sparrow – which ate grain seed and fruit. As a result of this campaign, many sparrows died from exhaustion; citizens would bang pots and pans so that sparrows would not have the chance to rest on tree branches and would fall dead from the sky. Sparrow nests were also destroyed, eggs were broken, and chicks were killed. In addition to these tactics, citizens also resorted to simply shooting the birds down from the sky. These mass attacks depleted the sparrow population, pushing it to near extinction. Furthermore, contests were held among enterprises, government agencies, and schools in cleanliness. Non-material rewards were given to those who handed in the largest number of rat tails, dead flies and mosquitoes, or dead sparrows.

"At dawn one day last week, the slaughter of the sparrows in Peking began, continuing a campaign that has been going on in the countryside for months. The objection to the sparrows is that, like the rest of China's inhabitants, they are hungry. They are accused of pecking away at supplies in warehouses and in paddyfields at an officially estimated rate of four pounds of grain per sparrow per year. And so divisions of soldiers deployed through Peking streets, their footfalls muffled by rubber-soled sneakers. Students and civil servants in high-collared tunics, and schoolchildren carrying pots and pans, ladles and spoons, quietly took up their stations. The total force, according to Radio Peking, numbered 3,000,000."

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