Four Pests Campaign

The Four Pests campaign, was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. Authorities targeted four pests for elimination: rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows - also known as the smash sparrows campaign or the eliminate sparrows campaign - resulted in severe ecological imbalance, being one of the causes of the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961. In 1960 the campaign against sparrows ended and bed bugs became an official target. Campaign The "Four Pests" campaign was introduced in 1958 as a hygiene campaign aimed to eradicate the pests responsible for the transmission of pestilence and disease: the mosquitos responsible for malaria the rodents that spread the plague the pervasive airborne flies the sparrows—specifically the Eurasian tree sparrow—which ate grain, seed, and fruit