The extermination of sparrows – also known as theEliminate Sparrows campaign – resulted in severeecological imbalance, and was one of the causes of theGreat Chinese Famine which lasted from 1959 to 1961, with an estimated death toll due to starvation ranging in the tens of millions (15 to 55 million).[note 1] In 1960, the campaign against sparrows ended, andbed bugs replaced them as an official target.
The eradication of the four pests together was first mentioned inMao Zedong's17-Point Agriculture Policy, in 1955,[note 2][10]: 136 as a way to reduce infectious diseases and grain loss caused by pests.[10]: 137 In January 1956, the 17-point policy was expanded into the draft ofNational Programme for Agricultural Development (1956–1967), which mentioned that "starting from 1956, we should work to eradicate rats, sparrows, flies, and mosquitoes in all areas possible across the country within five, seven or twelve years".[10]: 137 The draft was adopted by theCentral Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1957, with the timeline revised to twelve years.[10]: 140
Among other factors, the failure of food production during the Great Leap Forward was caused by newly mandated agricultural practices imposed by the state. In December 1958,Mao Zedong created theEight Elements Constitution [zh], eight pieces of agricultural advice purportedly based on science, which were then adopted throughout China. Contrary to expectations, most of the elements decreased agricultural production.[11]
"Eradicate pests and diseases and build happiness for ten thousand generations" (1960). A poster used during the Four Pests Campaign
The "Four Pests" campaign was introduced as a hygiene campaign aimed to eradicate the pests responsible for the transmission of pestilence and disease:
Though efforts to eradicate the pests were already well underway in 1957, the campaign would not be officially launched until February 12, 1958.[13]: 24 The campaign peaked in the 1957/1958 winter, and a February 1958 article inThe People's Daily mentioned:[10]: 143
more than 300 million rats and sparrows, and more than 246,000catties (4.54 million boxes) of mosquitoes and flies had been eliminated. More than 3,392,000 catties of fly larvae had been killed. Tens of millions of tons of garbage had been removed. The sanitary condition in urban and rural areas had been greatly improved
Activity began decreasing in the second half of 1958, due to the effects of theGreat Leap Forward. In 1960, sparrows were replaced with bed bugs, and a number of city initiatives were aimed towards the campaign.[10]: 143–144 However, the collapsing economy meant the campaign was rarely carried out after 1961.[10]: 145
In 1958, the government reported nearly 1.9 billion rats, and nearly 2 billion sparrows were killed.[14] In 1959, the campaign reportedly killed over 1 billion sparrows, 1.5 billion rats, 100 million kilograms of flies, and 11 million kilograms of mosquitoes, though the reliability of these figures are questionable.[15][16]
In an attempt to accomplish the significant task of changing the ecological order, Mao mobilized the Chinese population aged five and above. Similar to a coordinated military campaign, schoolchildren would disperse into the countryside at a specific hour to hunt sparrows.[17] A firsthand account from a formerSichuan schoolchild at the time of the campaign recounted, "It was fun to 'Wipe out the Four Pests'. The whole school went to kill sparrows. We made ladders to knock down their nests, and beatgongs in the evenings, when they were coming home toroost."[17] InBeijing, thePeople's Daily reported "Every morning and from 4:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., when sparrows were out of their nests and returning to their nests, citizens would work together to chase them".[18]: 147–149 To organize and promote the campaign, meetings were held and propaganda posters, leaflets, films andjingles were created.[18]: 147–149 [19]: 55 Contributing to the campaign was seen as a citizen's patriotic duty.[19]: 55
Methods of eliminating sparrows included catching them by hand; using glue traps, net traps, and other traps; using poisoned bait; and attacking them with poles.[20][21][22] Sparrow nests were destroyed, eggs were broken, and chicks were killed. Many people organized into groups and banged loud objects together to prevent sparrows from resting in their nests, with the goal of causing them to drop dead through sheer fatigue.[23][24] Tools employed included wire clamps, wire cages, bamboo poles,red flags,firecrackers, stones, slingshots,gongs,megaphones, washbasins,air guns, and scarecrows.[25][22][26] Citizens shot the birds down from the sky withslingshots or guns.[27][28] The campaign depleted the sparrow population, pushing it to near extinction within China.[27]
Some sparrows found arefuge in theextraterritorial premises of variousdiplomatic missions in China. The personnel of thePolish embassy in Beijing denied the Chinese request to enter the embassy premises and 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, thePoles had to use shovels to clear the embassy of dead sparrows.[29]
The sparrow campaign ended in disaster, although the other three anti-pest campaigns may have contributed to the improvement in health statistics in the 1950s.[30] By April 1960,Chinese Communist Party leaders changed their opinion on theEliminate Sparrows campaign in part due to the influence ofornithologistTso-hsin Cheng[31] who pointed out that sparrows ate a large number of insects, as well as grains.[32][33]Mao Zedong ordered the campaign against sparrows to end, replacing them withbedbugs.[34][35][36]
Millions of sparrows were killed.[37] While the campaign was meant to increase yields, concurrent droughts and floods as well as the lacking sparrow population decreased rice yields.[38][39] The extermination of sparrows upset theecological balance, which subsequently resulted in surginglocust and insect populations that destroyed crops due to a lack of a natural predator.[40][41]
With no sparrows to eat them,locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by theGreat Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.[39] Although sparrows were removed from the Four Pests in 1960, the disruption of ecological balance, combined with errors in food distribution policies and the exaggeration of crop production figures, led to theGreat Chinese Famine.[42][43][44][45] According to a 2025 study, the anti-sparrow campaign accounted for a nearly 20 percent drop in crop production, leading to the deaths of two million people.[46]
After the ending of the Four Pests campaign, the Eurasian tree sparrow was practically extirpated from China, which afterwards imported 250,000 Eurasian tree sparrows from theSoviet Union to recover its population.[46][47]
^abShapiro, Judith (2001).Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. Studies in Environment and History (1. publ ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 86–87.ISBN978-0-521-78150-3.
^Weatherley, Robert (2022).Mao's China And Post-Mao China: Revolution, Recovery And Rejuvenation. World Scientific Publishing Company. p. 48.
^"Chiny. Historia" [China. History] (in Polish). 2 June 1999.Archived from the original on 7 November 2017. Retrieved3 May 2016.
^Benson, Linda (2013).China Since 1949. Taylor & Francis. p. 32.
^Nowak, Eugeniusz (2002)."Erinnerungen an Ornithologen, die ich kannte (4. Teil)" [Reflections on Ornithologists whom I used to know (Part 4)](PDF).Der Ornithologische Beobachter (in German).99:49–70.Archived(PDF) from the original on 7 June 2021. Retrieved6 June 2021.
^Shapiro, Judith Rae (2001).Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge University Press.ISBN0-521-78680-0.
^Peng, Xizhe (1987). "Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's Provinces".Population and Development Review.13 (4):639–670.doi:10.2307/1973026.JSTOR1973026.
