Eradication of the four plagues

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The eradication of the four plagues ( Chin .:除四害 chú sìhài ), also known as the eradication of the four evils , was a mass campaign that was initiated during the Chinese Great Leap Forward .

The campaign began in 1958, and several mass campaigns were intended to increase agricultural productivity that year. The campaign was directed against rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows , especially tree sparrows . In China, the campaign is therefore also known as the “Great Sparrow Campaign” (打 | 麻 | 雀 | 运 | 动) or “Campaign to kill the sparrows” (消灭 麻雀 运动). Because of the impact of the population collapse on birds, which were absent as essential eaters of agricultural pests, in 1960 the elimination of bed bugs instead of birds was named as a goal. It was only after Mao Zedong's death that the official Chinese news agency Xinhua announced that sparrows were more beneficial than pests, and reported that authorities in Shandong Province were making efforts to increase the sparrow population.

background

With the “big leap forward” the leadership of the People's Republic of China wanted to level the “ three big differences ” between country and city, head and hand as well as industry and agriculture, catch up with the western industrialized countries and significantly shorten the transition period to communism . The Big Leap Campaign began under the first five-year plan from 1953 to 1957 and was to run until 1963. In 1961, the campaign that led to the Great Chinese Famine was called off after its apparent failure.

During the period of the “great leap forward”, people's communes were introduced across the board in rural areas. These were organized in a military-like manner, the members of a people's commune mostly carried out their work in brigades under the leadership of a brigade leader. The form of organization allowed the implementation of mass campaigns. In the years of the “big leap”, for example, numerous hydraulic engineering projects were introduced through and compulsorily other management methods on the agricultural areas. One of the most famous campaigns is the one to increase iron and steel production. At that time, the production quantities of iron and steel were still considered an indicator of a country's level of development. Mao Zedong's stated goal was a significant increase in iron and steel production; He wanted to achieve the level of production in Great Britain within a few years, which at that time was still one of the leading industrial nations. Numerous small blast furnaces were built across the country to achieve the goal; the members of the individual people's communes had to work on these blast furnaces for weeks. The campaign to "eradicate the four plagues" was organized in a similar way.

Reminders of running the campaign

In contrast to the other campaigns, children were also involved to a large extent. Mao Zedong himself issued the motto on May 18, 1958 at the second session of the 8th Party Congress that the entire population, including the five-year-olds, must be involved in this campaign to eradicate the four plagues.

Sinologist Kuan Yu-Chien , who emigrated to Germany during the Cultural Revolution, reports from his own memories : “I remembered a day when the whole population did nothing but put gongs and pots and all sorts of other objects on them that could make a noise Walking around the streets and in the courtyards to scare away the sparrows. The whole day had been rattling so loud that the birds had nowhere to settle and finally fell dead from the sky. Millions of birds were killed that day and we were all proud of it. Wasn't it fantastic how Mao Zedong managed to mobilize the entire population for a common goal? Only later did we learn that the birds that lived in the city always stayed in the city and therefore could not cause any damage in the fields. On the contrary: Since not only the grain-eating sparrows were affected by the action, we then experienced an insect plague. "

A contemporary witness interviewed by Judith Shapiro, who participated in this campaign as a school child, recalled the participation of the entire school. The children built ladders to knock down the nests and beat gongs in the evenings to prevent the birds from returning to their roosts. Another contemporary witness remembered how a large part of the population of her district went into the hills for several days in the evening and beat pots and pans there, in order to force the birds to fly up again and again until they died of exhaustion. A foreigner quoted by Philip Short who was visiting the People's Republic of China at the time later reported that he had not observed a sparrow for a period of four weeks.

See also

Web links

reception

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sabine Dabringhaus : History of China in the 20th Century. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-592867 , p. 133
  2. ↑ Stephan Reich, DER SPIEGEL: China's war against birds 1958: With cannons on sparrows - DER SPIEGEL - history. Retrieved March 16, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Summers-Smith (2005), p. 57
  4. ^ Li, Kwok-sing, A glossary of political terms of the People's Republic of China . 1995. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Translated by Mary Lok. Pp. 47-48.
  5. ↑ Chan, Alfred L .: Mao's crusade: politics and policy implementation in China's great leap forward  (= Studies on contemporary China). Oxford University Press , ISBN 978-0-19-924406-5 , p. 13
  6. ↑ Shapiro, p. 86 and p. 87
  7. ↑ Yu-chien Kuan : My life under two skies. Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-596-17921-3 , p. 468
  8. ↑ Shapiro, p. 87
  9. ↑ Shapiro, p. 87
  10. ^ Philip Short: Mao - A Life . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1999, ISBN 0-340-60624-X , p. 477 and p. 478