Life Lessons
How China’s War on Sparrows Killed Millions of Humans
A hard lesson in ecology
China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ campaign is widely regarded as one of the biggest disasters in human history. Initiated in 1958 by Mao Zedong, leader of China’s Communist Party, the Great Leap Forward included an ambitious plan to transform agrarian rural economies into an industrialised agricultural super-system which would easily produce enough grain for the burgeoning population. In trying to maximise grain output, though, Zedong became obsessed with the idea that one of the biggest enemies to his Grand Plan was the humble sparrow. But in the end, China’s war on sparrows killed millions of humans.
Based on reports that every sparrow consumes 4.5 kilos of grain per year, he reasoned that for every million sparrows exterminated, the country’s farmland could feed an extra 60,000 Chinese citizens. He declared them the enemies of Communism and mobilised almost the entire population of 600 million Chinese people to exterminate them.
New laws were passed to allow the unrestricted and indiscriminate slaughter of sparrows by any means necessary, and the entire population was mobilised against them, with rewards being offered by the government for each sparrow killed.
