Mao's Great Famine -

: Mao ordered the extermination of sparrows, believing they ate grain. Instead, the loss of sparrows led to a locust plague that devastated crops. The Collapse: A Man-Made Disaster

: Peasants were ordered to melt down their cooking pots, tools, and doorknobs in crude furnaces to produce steel. This resulted in useless, low-quality pig iron and left farmers with no tools to till the land. Mao's Great Famine

As production targets became impossible to meet, local officials feared being labeled "rightists" and began over-reporting their harvests to Beijing. : Mao ordered the extermination of sparrows, believing

In 1958, Chairman Mao Zedong launched the , an ambitious plan to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economy into a communist industrial superpower. The goal was to surpass the industrial output of Great Britain within 15 years. To achieve this, the state implemented radical changes: This resulted in useless, low-quality pig iron and