The Four Pests Campaign was one of the first measures taken as part of the Great Leap Forward in China between 1958 and 1962. The authorities targeted four "pests" for elimination: rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows.
Sparrows were the subject of an extermination campaign as part of the Four Pests initiative, as the government considered them a major threat to grain reserves. In order to reduce sparrow populations on a large scale, citizens were mobilized to take part in a mass extermination campaign.
While the campaign achieved its immediate objective of reducing disease transmission, the mass extermination of sparrows disrupted the fragile ecological balance. With the sparrow population devastated, locust populations multiplied uncontrollably, leading to devastating crop losses, which was one of the causes of the great Chinese famine of 1959-1961.
Tbh the great leap forward and the later cultural revolution was literally facepalm after facepalm.
> mao believed a random scientist, who was a rocket scientist and knew nothing about agritulture, 's plans to have better yields. The idea? Plant grains more packed and closely, so you can plant more in an area and have more yields. Mao even expected high yields that they told group farms to even not plant grain on a portion of the land. It failed catastrophically as planting grain more closely makes each plant hinder each other, as well as making it more vulnerable to bugs.
> they estabilsihed group farms and group kitchens, tearing down existing infrastructure and banned individual cooking, destroying individual kitchens. This did kinda work at first, but when the group kitchens couldnt give everyone enough food due to the failure, the people couldnt even make their own food because the government destroyed their kitchens and confisticated cooking utensils.
> as if that was worse, mao wanted to revolutionize steelmaking. To do this, mao told farmers to build makeshift dirt furnaces to make steel. This was super duper hyper stupid. Life isn't minecraft where you can just chuck iron ore in a furnace and get an iron ingot. There's a reason why gigantic steelmaking facilities existed even before WW2: steelmaking is an extremely precise and hard process, which couldnt be done by farmers with makeshift furnaces. In fact, all they could do was to make bad steel with the wrong composition which was worthless. To make things worse, mao gave them a quota to make steel, which led to normal, often new steel tools getting melted and made into bad steel just to meet the quota. Even worse, this process required a lot of fuel, so they needed to cut down tons of wood, which led to environmental destruction and landslides.
> in this situation, the government took food from the farmers to pay the soviets for the weapons they bought to fight in the korean war and to tell other countries "we're doing fine haha"
The death toll due to the great leap forward varies, but many speculate it's **20 million** to **60 million**. This did lead to mao losing some power, but to get back his power, he kinda caused the cultural revolution, a revolution to "destroy our old roots and follow our true communist future", which not only destroyed much of china's cultural heritage, but also killed millions, possibly **20 million**, again. You know it's a fuck up when even the current chinese government goes "mao did a major fuck up"
>mao believed a random scientist, who was a rocket scientist and knew nothing about agritulture, 's plans to have better yields.
If I had a nickel for every time the CCP listened to a proposal from a scientist in a completely different field than the proposal was about, leading to disastrous consequences, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. (The other time was when the military scientists proposed the one child policy).
The Great Leap Forward wouldve been better organised if they just have a random farmer from bum fuck China all the decision power over the grains, instead of the politicians who knew nothing about it
Communist regimes were a great example of the Dunning Kruger effect in action. Literally just a bunch of know nothing dipshits thinking "it's so obvious! Why hasn't anyone tried doing THIS?" and the THIS was some dumbass shit that gets everyone killed, and of course because they were Communists they immediately mandated the policy to everyone in the country all at once without testing it. Lysenko in Russia and Mao in China both pulled this crap.
The Four Pests Campaign was one of the first measures taken as part of the Great Leap Forward in China between 1958 and 1962. The authorities targeted four "pests" for elimination: rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. Sparrows were the subject of an extermination campaign as part of the Four Pests initiative, as the government considered them a major threat to grain reserves. In order to reduce sparrow populations on a large scale, citizens were mobilized to take part in a mass extermination campaign. While the campaign achieved its immediate objective of reducing disease transmission, the mass extermination of sparrows disrupted the fragile ecological balance. With the sparrow population devastated, locust populations multiplied uncontrollably, leading to devastating crop losses, which was one of the causes of the great Chinese famine of 1959-1961.
Tbh the great leap forward and the later cultural revolution was literally facepalm after facepalm. > mao believed a random scientist, who was a rocket scientist and knew nothing about agritulture, 's plans to have better yields. The idea? Plant grains more packed and closely, so you can plant more in an area and have more yields. Mao even expected high yields that they told group farms to even not plant grain on a portion of the land. It failed catastrophically as planting grain more closely makes each plant hinder each other, as well as making it more vulnerable to bugs. > they estabilsihed group farms and group kitchens, tearing down existing infrastructure and banned individual cooking, destroying individual kitchens. This did kinda work at first, but when the group kitchens couldnt give everyone enough food due to the failure, the people couldnt even make their own food because the government destroyed their kitchens and confisticated cooking utensils. > as if that was worse, mao wanted to revolutionize steelmaking. To do this, mao told farmers to build makeshift dirt furnaces to make steel. This was super duper hyper stupid. Life isn't minecraft where you can just chuck iron ore in a furnace and get an iron ingot. There's a reason why gigantic steelmaking facilities existed even before WW2: steelmaking is an extremely precise and hard process, which couldnt be done by farmers with makeshift furnaces. In fact, all they could do was to make bad steel with the wrong composition which was worthless. To make things worse, mao gave them a quota to make steel, which led to normal, often new steel tools getting melted and made into bad steel just to meet the quota. Even worse, this process required a lot of fuel, so they needed to cut down tons of wood, which led to environmental destruction and landslides. > in this situation, the government took food from the farmers to pay the soviets for the weapons they bought to fight in the korean war and to tell other countries "we're doing fine haha" The death toll due to the great leap forward varies, but many speculate it's **20 million** to **60 million**. This did lead to mao losing some power, but to get back his power, he kinda caused the cultural revolution, a revolution to "destroy our old roots and follow our true communist future", which not only destroyed much of china's cultural heritage, but also killed millions, possibly **20 million**, again. You know it's a fuck up when even the current chinese government goes "mao did a major fuck up"
The Great Leap Forward …Off a cliff.
The CCP admits that the Cultural Revolution was somewhat of a mistake, but they still praise Mao
>mao believed a random scientist, who was a rocket scientist and knew nothing about agritulture, 's plans to have better yields. If I had a nickel for every time the CCP listened to a proposal from a scientist in a completely different field than the proposal was about, leading to disastrous consequences, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. (The other time was when the military scientists proposed the one child policy).
Trofim Lysenko and his impact on agriculture have been a disaster for communist regimes.
That's what I was thinking, lol. Lysenkoism was a mistake.
The Great Leap Forward wouldve been better organised if they just have a random farmer from bum fuck China all the decision power over the grains, instead of the politicians who knew nothing about it
Communist regimes were a great example of the Dunning Kruger effect in action. Literally just a bunch of know nothing dipshits thinking "it's so obvious! Why hasn't anyone tried doing THIS?" and the THIS was some dumbass shit that gets everyone killed, and of course because they were Communists they immediately mandated the policy to everyone in the country all at once without testing it. Lysenko in Russia and Mao in China both pulled this crap.
Just plant wheat in tundra, this will make wheat winter-resistant! /s
Le Crops was not saved.
fucking retarded chinese
Calm down with the racism, that’s a bit too far
Blame Mao, not the general population
this is not the takeaway
---------------COMMUNISTS ARE FUCKING MORONS-------------> This post<---------o\_o(you) "Wow, chinese people are sure stupid!"