via: The AI Great Leap Forward
Images: uncredited
The Great Leap Forward’s most tragicomic chapter was the 除四害运动 (Eliminate Four Pests Campaign). Mao declared sparrows an enemy of the state — they ate grain seeds, so killing them would increase harvests. The entire country mobilized. Citizens banged pots and pans to keep sparrows airborne until they dropped dead from exhaustion. Children climbed trees to smash nests. Villages competed for the highest kill count. It worked. They nearly eradicated sparrows.
Then the locusts came.
Sparrows ate locusts. Without sparrows, locust populations exploded. The swarms devoured far more grain than the sparrows ever did. The campaign to save the harvest destroyed it. Mao quietly replaced sparrows with bedbugs on the official pest list and never spoke of it again.
Every AI Great Leap Forward has its sparrow campaign.
