To Kill a Sparrow � Now I Know Archives: Mao’s government began a large-scale propaganda campaign to get peasants to shoo or kill sparrows on sight. The poster above is one example: it shows a child armed with a slingshot and the text below, translated, means “Everyone come and fight sparrows.”
The campaign was successful on its face, as the sparrow was nearly rendered extinct in China. But it turns out that sparrows did not just eat grains. They also ate insects — specifically, locusts. The locust population, left unchecked, ate a lot more grain than the sparrows ever could.
By the time Mao’s government noticed and could react, two years had passed, and the damage was already done. The ecological imbalance caused by the Four Pests Campaign helped spur on massive food shortages and, in turn, the death of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.