The Four Pests campaign (), was one of the first actions taken in the

Great Leap Forward The Great Leap Forward (Second Five Year Plan) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962. CCP Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruc ...

in China from 1958 to 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats,

flies Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced ...

mosquito Mosquitoes (or mosquitos) are members of a group of almost 3,600 species of small flies within the family Culicidae (from the Latin ''culex'' meaning " gnat"). The word "mosquito" (formed by ''mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish for "li ...

es, and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows is also known as the smash sparrows campaign () or eliminate sparrows campaign (), which resulted in severe

ecological Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

imbalance, being one of the causes of the

Great Chinese Famine The Great Chinese Famine () was a period between 1959 and 1961 in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC) characterized by widespread famine. Some scholars have also included the years 1958 or 1962. It is widely regarded as the dead ...

. In 1960, the campaign against sparrows was ended and redirected to bed bugs.

Campaign

The "Four Pests" campaign was introduced in 1958 as a hygiene 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 * the sparrows—specifically the

Eurasian tree sparrow The Eurasian tree sparrow (''Passer montanus'') is a passerine bird in the Old World sparrow, sparrow family with a rich chestnut Crown (anatomy), crown and nape, and a black patch on each pure white cheek. The sexes are similarly plumaged, an ...

—which ate

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legum ...

seed and fruit

Sparrows

Sparrows were suspected of consuming approximately 2 kg (4 pounds) of grain per sparrow per year. Sparrow nests were destroyed, eggs were broken, and chicks were killed. Millions of people organized into groups, and hit noisy pots and pans to prevent sparrows from resting in their nests, with the goal of causing them to drop dead from exhaustion. In addition to these tactics, citizens also simply shot the birds down from the sky. The campaign depleted the sparrow population, pushing it to near extinction within China. Some sparrows found a refuge in the

extraterritorial In international law, extraterritoriality is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. Historically, this primarily applied to individuals, as jurisdiction was usually cla ...

premises of various

diplomatic mission A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually deno ...

s in China. The personnel of the Polish embassy in Beijing denied the Chinese request of entering the premises of the embassy to scare away the sparrows who were hiding there and as a result the embassy was surrounded by people with drums. After two days of constant drumming, the

Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Ce ...

had to use shovels to clear the embassy of dead sparrows.

Effects

By April 1960, Chinese leaders changed their opinion in part due to the influence of

ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

Tso-hsin Cheng Tso-hsin Cheng (郑作新 also transcribed as Zheng Zuoxin) (18 November 1906 – 27 June 1998) was a Chinese ornithologist known for his seminal work on the birds of China and mentoring a generation of researchers. Educated in the United States, ...

who pointed out that sparrows ate a large number of insects, as well as grains. While the campaign was meant to increase yields, concurrent droughts and floods as well as the lacking sparrow population decreased rice yields. In the same month,

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

ordered the campaign against sparrows to end. Sparrows were replaced with bed bugs, as the extermination of sparrows had upset the ecological balance, which subsequently resulted in surging locust and insect populations that destroyed crops due to a lack of a natural predator. With no sparrows to eat them,

locust Locusts (derived from the Vulgar Latin ''locusta'', meaning grasshopper) are various species of short-horned grasshoppers in the family Acrididae that have a swarming phase. These insects are usually solitary, but under certain circumstanc ...

populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the

, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides. Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the

. The Chinese government eventually resorted to importing 250,000 sparrows from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

to replenish their population.

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

series ''The People's Century – 1949: The Great Leap''
China follows Mao with mass cull (BBC)

Catastrophic Miscaculations
* 1958 in China 1962 in China 1958 in the environment Campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party Environmental disasters in China Great Leap Forward Pest control campaigns

Campaign

Sparrows

Effects

See also

References

External links