Explanation: During Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”, sparrows were (unwisely) identified as one of the pests holding China’s agricultural productivity back, and subject to campaigns of extermination.

Turns out, sparrows eat a lot of more destructive agricultural pests, and killing most of China’s sparrows set back their agricultural productivity… considerably. Amongst other missteps during the “Great Leap Forward”

Afterwards, China would resort to importing sparrows from the Soviet Union to unfuck their ecosystem.

Reminds me of the great Emu war.

Lesson: there are good reasons why Rome did not go to war against the birds .