5. The Chinese Government Was Not Exactly Big on Environmentalism
At the heart of the “Eliminate Sparrows Campaign” is the fact that Mao Zedong simply did not understand the natural world. In many ways, he actually despised nature and thought that it should give way to human needs and wants. Notions such as the need to live in harmony with the natural world and refrain from doing it harm were not popular or even known in his circle. To the extent that such ideas were even acknowledged, they were dismissed as backward spirituality and superstition harmful to progress, or decadent Western fru fru. The Maoist worldview, which was disseminated to the masses via propaganda, indoctrination, repression, censorship, and utopian promises, actively pitted humans against nature.
China’s communist government repeatedly urged people to “conquer nature“, and in 1958, Mao famously declared: “Make the high mountain bow its head; make the river yield the way“. In short, Mao was not exactly an environmentalist or conservationist. The notion that sparrows might have an important role in the maintenance of an ecological balance that benefitted people was alien to him and his acolytes. Mao’s subjects paid a dear price for the Chairman’s failure to grasp that. As seen below, implementation of the plan to exterminate sparrows was a significant factor in a disaster that killed tens of millions.
