Counterrevolutionary enemy of the people.
As part of his "Great Leap" programme to increase agricultural production Mao initiated the "Four Pests" campaign to kill off as many rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows as possible. Posters like that immediately below exhorted the citizenry to do their part.
And they did, the people really got into it. When high-tech weaponry like the slingshot didn't work people would go outside and start banging pots and pans together to frighten the sparrows from landing (and resting) on trees and roofs. The sparrows had to stay aloft until they died from exhaustion.
A proud Red father.
A proud little "morning sun."
Triumph! A parade with cart (mule-drawn, right wheel coming off) full of dead sparrows.
The Anti-Sparrow campaign was wildly successful. So successful that locusts, which the sparrows ate, devoured the crops now that their natural enemy had been so drastically reduced. The result was catastrophic famine:
