Thread by @myhistorytales

Do you know of the insane piece of history when China tried to kill all the sparrows in their country?

Join me on a #HistoryTour to revisit the Four Pests Campaign a mind bending action by Mao Zedong & the Chinese that resulted in disaster!

A crazy history 🧵

This story starts in the early 1900s when China was under Japanese occupation & in continuous civil war & high rate of poverty & hunger.

At this time, Russian Revolution had already succeeded & Communism was seen as a success story amongst Chinese Intellectuals.

2/n

The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 and it grew powerful in protest against the Japanese & as a potential hope for the common people

Mao Zedong was the popular leader of the Communist party & the face of the rebellion for a few decades.

3/n

The Japanese were finally thrown out by 1949 & the CCP came to power in China under the leadership of Mao. Mao's main goals were to unify China, drive a cultural revolution & invigorate the agrarian economy

By the 1950s China had severe famines & high rate of hunger deaths 4/n

As part of the economic & social reform, Mao introduced the 'Great Leap Forward' initiative where he wanted to increase crop yields, remove poverty & improve quality of life through people communes ( a collection of people to work towards specific goals ) 5/n

As part of the Great Leap Forward, a crazy idea emerged!

Mao identified that certain animals were only pests without any use to humankind.

He decided to kill them all!

Rats , Mosquitoes , Flies & Sparrows were the 4 pests that he declared to be made extinct 6/n

Mosquitoes brought Malaria

Rats brought Plague

Flies brought contamination

Sparrows ate grains

So, Mao started the 4 Pests campaign & called all people to come forward & kill these 4 pests!

7/n

Posters were made. Tools were given. Schools, communes, offices were all encouraged to work together

And the people responded to his war call

Estimated 1.5 billion rats, 24 million pounds of Mosquitoes, 220 million pounds of flies were killed over the next couple of years! 8/n

Special focus was given to Sparrows. Mao accused sparrows of eating 2kg of grain each every year & blamed them for the famine

People were called to shoot sparrows, hit stones, destroy their nests on trees, make noise with pans such that they are disturbed & die without rest! 9/n

Millions of people set upon this & it became so widespread that across China sparrows started dying enmasse.

It was so successful that sparrows started going to Embassy compounds of other nations as they were extraterritorial - only place where locals couldnt hunt them! 🥴 10/n

So many sparrows nested in the Embassy of Poland that China asked them to open up for hunting. When Poland refused , the locals surrounded the embassy with drums to make noise to disturb the sparrows that the Poles relented & had to use shovels to clean the dead sparrows!! 12/n

Sparrows were driven to near extinction.

But by 1960, the famine still raged. There was no end to hunger but something worse happened.

Sparrows not only ate grains, but they ate insects also!

With no sparrows around, a Locust boom happened!!

13/n

Without a natural predator, billions of locusts started destroying crops across China resulting in complete ecological disaster.

All grains gone.

A simple famine became acerbated to become - The Great Chinese Famine. An estimated 55 million people died from it 😥

14/n

Anhui, a fertile agricultural province had 20% death rate. One in 5 people died. Govt was over reporting grain numbers & diverting people to such measures like killing sparrows. The people believed it but finally had to face the brunt of corruption & stupid ecological decisions

The govt eventually realized their mistake & imported 250,000 sparrows from Soviet Union 🤦‍♂️

But the damage was done

History teaches us that nature is in balance on its own & making it bend to human whims leads to disaster!

RT this story if you liked it & pls follow for more!