Well, are all the sparrows dead? Last i went back to China, it's a pest in my hometown. I went to SEA and bird traps are everywhere too, and even in India...there are bird traps in paddy fields. It was common to destroyed pest everywhere back then...of course I don't support it. Well humans are now more educated and going green including China, but politizing it is a different thing.
I know of a story in India, they caught all the frogs in the fields to export as frogs legs to France, and the insects multiplied and destroyed the fields. Sounds familiar? Did your father tell you about this story? This is a real story.
Was there starvation in the great leap forward, of course there was, was the western media there to measure the scale of the starvation? Nobody can verify it, but in India, even without any action, the starvation continues. It's all because of political ineptitude.
Their definition of being hungry is totally different by Chinese standards. I know there are many poor Chinese out there but starvation level, I seriously had never seen one. But in Bangalore, a so called modern developed area, I see poverty levels that is extreme. Imagine if you go to the rural areas......