The Yellow River, the Chinese State, and the Ecology of North China

Flowing through the North China Plain, one of China’s major agricultural regions, the Yellow River has long represented a challenge to Chinese governments to manage. Preventing floods has been an overriding concern for these states in order to maintain a semblance of ecological equilibrium on the North China Plain. This region’s environment is heavily influenced by seasonal fluctuations in precipitation, leading to a long history of famine, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when water management structures disintegrated with the deterioration of the imperial system. In the 20th century, new civil and hydraulic engineering techniques and technologies held the promise for enhanced management of the region’s waterways. After 1949, the new government of the People’s Republic used a hybrid approach consisting of the tenets of multipurpose water management combined with the tools of mass mobilization that were hallmarks of the Chinese Communist Party. The wide-ranging exploitation of surface and groundwater resources during the Maoist period left a long shadow for the post-Mao period that witnessed rapid consumption of water to fuel agricultural, industrial, and urban reforms. The challenge for the contemporary state in China is creating a system of water allocation through increased supply and demand management that can sustain the economic and social transformations of the era.