this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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China's Four Pests campaign is a great example. As the campaign says, China had a bit of a pest problem. One of these particular pests was the sparrow. The government decided it would be a great idea to launch an "exterminate sparrows" campaign. The only problem was sparrows ate other pests such as bedbugs and locusts.
In short, they sucessfully curbed the "sparrow problem" and replaced it with a "locusts and bedbugs problem". This ultimately upset the ecological balance and further lowered the rice yields. It was a complete disaster
The great leap forward was such a colossal clusterfuck that you can't blame it on any one thing (although most of them would be prevented without the authoritarianism). Literally everything was wrong. Sparrows, lysenkoism, forced collectivization (basically, and perhaps ironically, farmers not owning the means of production), Mao just being evil, backyard burners, rigid chain of command that gave the chairman absolute authority but at the same prevented him from knowing what was going on, everything.