How the persecution of sparrows killed 2m people
IN 1958, UNDER the rule of Mao Zedong, China began the Great Leap Forward, a four-year attempt to transform the country from an agrarian society into a modern industrialised one. It was a disaster: the industrialisation was stillborn, and the collectivisation of farming caused one of the biggest famines ever recorded. Somewhere between 15m and 50m people are thought to have died.
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