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Our history is the witness that whenever humans have challenged nature by disturbing its balance, it has always reverted back. And in this blog, we will discuss one such mistake committed by the Chinese government which disturbed the balance of nature and in return, it gave rise to The Great Famine of China which started in the year 1958 and ending in the year 1962. This famine killed more than 40 million people. So, let us begin to discuss it.
THE BEGINNING
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It is the story of some years before 1958 when Britain used to be the world’s superpower and the USA was soon to become a superpower. And at that time, China was not developed enough and there was a person named Mao Zedong who wanted to make China a better country. He was the founder of the People’s Republic Of China Party or PRC. Till 1958, China also used to be an agriculture dominated country like that of India. And Mao Zedong’s dream was to eliminate the USA’s economy after 15 years and he also wanted to eliminate the British economy.
THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD
To make his dream come true, Mao Zedong made a plan called the great leap forward. By the name, you can understand that China wanted to take a great leap forward. The whole plan was ready and one thing was needed to implement this plan which was making China’s economy strong through farmers. So, Mao’s government paid more attention to farming.
THE PROBLEM
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But, there was some problem in the plan which was that the Chinese scientists discovered that a small sparrow bird ate about 4 kilograms of crops every year. And there was a huge number of sparrows and rats that they ate almost all the crops.
THE FOUR PEST CAMPAIGN
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And the Chinese government thought that if they killed all the sparrows and the rats, then there will be an increase in the number of crops produced and it will be easier to export them. So, the Chinese government started a campaign called THE GREAT SPARROW CAMPAIGN or THE FOUR PEST CAMPAIGN. Under this campaign, children, old-age people, men, women and even the Chinese army was involved. The government announced to them to kill the sparrow bird and rats and in return, get some money from the government, there is no need for sparrows and rats in China. The government also said to kill the sparrows and save their country. This campaign was applied like a war in China. All the Chinese people thought that they are doing a great job by killing these sparrows and rats. And even in some public places, people were trained about how to kill sparrows. Whenever people got a chance, they killed sparrows. Also, people used to destroy the sparrow’s nest and break their eggs.
THE RESULT
And on the first day of the campaign, more than 300,000 sparrows were killed. Whoever killed more sparrows, received more prizes from the government, and even in schools and institutions, whoever killed more sparrows, received medals. As a result, after 2 years sparrows were almost extinct from China. Humans created a huge disturbance in nature.
NATURE'S COUNTERATTACK
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It was the time for nature to counterattack. Sparrows not only ate crops but also some insects. They ate those insects in a bulk. And now, when sparrows were almost extinct, the number of insects increased a lot in China. These insects were increasing enormously. And these insects started eating crops in a bulk. Instead of increasing, the number of crops was declining. Without sparrows, the number of locusts increased a lot and they ate all the crops from the field.
THE FAMINE
And after some time, in the year 1958, China reached the situation of famine. At that time, the Chinese population was 660 million. The situation then became even worse, people started to die. And millions of people died because of hunger. Around 30 million people died because of hunger between the years 1958 and 1960. Finally, when China realised the mistake, many sparrows were imported to China from Russia. So, this was the mistake committed by humans which killed millions of people.
I HAVE WRITTEN THIS BLOG TO RECALL HUMANS ABOUT A MISTAKE THEY COMMITTED IN THE PAST THAT KILLED MILLIONS IN CHINA AND I DO NOT WANT HUMANS TO REPEAT THE SAME WITHOUT EVEN GIVING IT A SECOND THOUGHT.
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