Table of Contents
The Four Pests Campaign 1958
- The 4 pests campaign was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forwardin China from 1958 to 1962.
- Mao Zedong’s spectacular plan to rid China of diseases.
- The campaign caused widespread famine, economic ruin, environmental changes.
Background
- After decades of civil war, world war and revolution, People’s Republic of China PRC was established in 1949.
- In the 1950s PRC was eager to create the communist utopia Mao had promised.
- Among the many Five Year Plans and campaigns undertaken to achieve that goal was the spectacular failure known as the Four Pests Campaign.
- The Great Leap forward (1958-1962)
- The Great Leap Forward (Second Five Year Plan) was an economic and social campaign led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) from 1958 to 1962.
- Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through the formation of people’s communes.
- Mao decreed increased efforts to multiply grain yields and bring industry to the countryside.
Pests targeted
- The four pests to be eliminated were
- Rats
- Flies
- Mosquitoes
- Sparrows
Diseases ravaged China for centuries
- Bubonic Plague
- Cholera
- Schistosomiasis
- Tuberculosis
- Small pox
- Malaria
- Dengue
Eliminate Sparrows Campaign
- Why birds?
- They ate grains, seeds and fruits cultivated with hard work by farmers
- Since these were the easiest to kill, a large number of people started hunting them in groups
- Local competitions for most kills!
- 1 billion sparrows, 1.5 billion rats, 100 million kilograms of flies and 11 million kilograms of mosquitoes were outright decimated
- The sparrow’s intrinsic role in the ecological balance was unrealized and resulted in an unmitigated, well-orchestrated environmental disaster
- Locusts and other small insects went unchecked and their large numbers devoured fields of grain.
- In 1960, Mao Zedong ended the campaign against sparrows and redirected the fourth focus to bed bugs
The Great Famine 1959 – 1962
- The Great Chinese Famine is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation ranges in the tens of millions
- Death toll
- 5 crore – official
- 3 – 4.5 crore – Independent historians
Impact
- The “Four Pests” campaign was successful in achieving its primary goal of vermin eradication.
- But one of the most successful public health campaigns in history came at an extraordinarily grave cost for the Chinese, ecologically and demographically.
- Tamper with the unseen balancing beam of predators and prey – nature will create a level playing field at humans’ expense.
Link to COVID 19
- After two decades of severe economic distress, including famine and food shortages, in the late 1970s, China embarked on an unusual agricultural experiment of wildlife farming.
- The state had little money to invest in scaling up livestock production.
- Instead, farmers were encouraged to collect wild animals—rats, civets, snakes, bats and others—and breed them for home consumption and commercial markets.
Latest Burning Issues | Free PDF