Chinese government policy encouraging hostility to perceived biological pests
The Four Evils campaign (Chinese: 除四害; pinyin: Chú Sì Hài) was one of the first campaigns of the Great Leap Forward in Maoist 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[1] (Chinese: 打麻雀运动; pinyin: dǎ máquè yùndòng) or the eliminate sparrows campaign (Chinese: 消灭麻雀运动; pinyin: xiāomiè máquè yùndòng) – resulted in severe ecological imbalance, and was one of the causes of the Great Chinese Famine which lasted from 1959 to 1961, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions (15 to 55 million).[note 1] The most stricken provinces were Anhui (18% dead), Chongqing (15%), Sichuan (13%), Guizhou (11%) and Hunan (8%).[11] In 1960, the campaign against sparrows ended, and bed bugs became an official target.
^Cite error: The named reference Cao 2005 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).