Mao’s War Against the Sparrows That Brought China to Its Knees (opens in new tab)

The Four Pests Campaign was, by many measures, a political success. It mobilized millions under a single cause, exterminating rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows for the purpose of a cleaner, more modern China. But it also contributed to the deaths of 15 to 45 million people. Unless Chairman Mao considered his own citizens the […]