Picture this: an authoritarian leader with no respect for nature comes to power in a large country and, rather predictably, implements a horribly stupid environmental policy that has awful consequences on millions of people. No, I am not talking about the United States in 2016; I am talking about The People’s Republic of China.
Our story starts back in 1958. The new communist government, led by the notorious Mao Zedong, had taken control of the country less than 10 years prior, and they had big plans. Mao wanted to make China an industrial superpower similar to the United States and the USSR; however, China and its economy were still years behind these goliath world powers. In order to catch up, China would have to industrialize fast. So, Mao implemented his master plan: The Great Leap Forward. The GLF promised to industrialize China at lightning speed using China’s massive manpower. Normally, countries industrialize by gaining capital over time then investing that capital into heavy machinery, but for Mao, this process was far too slow. Mao had a vision of all of China coming together to show the world that China was ready to play with the big boys. Unfortunately, things didn’t exactly go as planned…
One key part of the GLF was a campaign called the Four Pests Campaign. The premise was simple: eliminate four pest creatures that were impeding China’s progress forward. These four evil creatures were as follows: mosquitoes, flies, rats, and sparrows. The first three were targeted largely because they contributed to the spread of disease, but why sparrows? Sparrows, in Mao’s opinion, ate too much grain. These nefarious little birds were reducing China’s grain output, slowing the progress of the GLF. So, in order to solve this problem, Mao called upon the people of China to wage war on these pesky birds. People would shoot sparrows, tear down nests, and even chase birds while banging pots and pans to prevent them from landing until they died of exhaustion. This brutal campaign is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of sparrows.
Unfortunately for Mao, his hatred for sparrows quickly came back to haunt him. Another thing sparrows eat besides grain is insects. One of these insects happens to be locusts. As soon as the sparrow populations were decimated, the locust population exploded, and they were far more damaging than the birds. Grain production collapsed as locust swarms swept through the country, and soon people began to starve.
Sparrows were quickly removed from the list of the four pests and replaced with bed bugs. In the process, Mao had learned a very painful lesson about controlling nature. Officially, the government reported 15 million deaths as a result of the Great Famine; however, most estimates of the actual number are 45 million or more deaths. This event scarred families and caused horrible atrocities across China; thousands of people were murdered and eaten by the starving masses. Today, this horrible tragedy serves as a solemn reminder to humanity: nature does not exist to serve our needs.
HAHA! I like your beginning when you compare China to the U.S. in 2016. I find this very interesting and similar to the Yellowstone issue when wolves were killed. When Americans killed of the wolves, the deer population exploded, causing them to over graze and mess up the ecosystem. This seems to happen a lot in other places as well. Nature requires balance and diversity, so by taking a key part away, it becomes destroyed. Also, I think your writing style is great!
Mother nature doesn’t play games… This was a really interesting read, and I thank you for sharing it. Do I recognize that poster featuring the knife from your post in HW 4? I look forward to you speech if it ends up working out.
The situation you describe reminds me of a lesson from microbiology last year. The professor talked about how the US cracked down hard on cockroaches, but all of a sudden the bedbugs that they thought were controlled some years before came back with massive infestations. Turns out that cockroaches are one of the main predators of bed bugs.
Hey Jonathan! As usual, I enjoyed the read. Although this is a great fun fact, it also provides an important lesson I learned in my APES class this year: don’t mess with nature! I love your writing style and humor — great job:)