China Killed All Their Sparrows (Then Came The Famine)

What the film says

1. Officials reasoned that killing a million sparrows would save enough grain to feed 60,000 people.

   3

2. After the sparrows were removed, locust and other insect populations surged.

   4

3. The Great Chinese Famine (1959–61) is widely regarded as the deadliest famine in history.

   2

4. A 2025 NBER working paper by Eyal Frank and colleagues used county sparrow-habitat suitability to measure the campaign's effect.

   1

5. The NBER paper found that one standard deviation more sparrow suitability meant an 8.7% larger wheat decline and 9.6% higher mortality, implying nearly two million excess deaths.

   1

6. In 1960, Vice Premier Tan Zhenlin declared the anti-sparrow campaign a success.

   5

7. In 1960, sparrows were removed from the campaign's list of pests and replaced by bedbugs.

   5

8. China reportedly imported 250,000 Eurasian tree sparrows from the Soviet Union.

   6

9. The anti-sparrow campaign accounted for nearly 20% of the decline in crop production.

   6