Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Rivers
Languages : en
Pages : 828
Book Description
River Control and the Yellow River of China
Author: Controlling the Dragon
Author: Randall A. DodgenPublisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824823665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
The Yellow River has long been viewed as a symbol of China's cultural and political development, its management traditionally held as a gauge of dynastic power. For centuries, the country's early rulers employed a defensive approach to the river by building dikes and diversion channels to protect fields and population centers from flooding. This situation changed dramatically after the Yuan (1260-1368) emperors constructed the Grand Canal, which linked the North China Plain and the capital at Beijing with the Yangtze Valley. One of the most ambitious imperial undertakings of any age, by the turn of the nineteenth century the water system had become a complex network of locks, spillways, and dikes stretching eight hundred kilometers from the mountains in western Henan to the Yellow Sea. Controlling the Dragon examines Yellow River engineering from two perspectives. The first looks at long-term efforts to manage the river starting in the early Ming dynasty, at the nature of the bureaucracy created to do the job, and finally focuses on two of the Confucian engineers who served successfully in the decade before the system was abandoned. In the second section, the author chronicles a series of dramatic floods in the 1840s and explores the way politics, environment, and technology interacted to undermine the state's commitment to the Yellow River control system.
River Control and the Yellow River of China
Author: The Yellow River
Author: David A. PietzPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674966929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382
Book Description
Flowing through the heart of the North China Plain—home to 200 million people—the Yellow River sustains one of China’s core regions. Yet this vital water supply has become highly vulnerable in recent decades, with potentially serious repercussions for China’s economic, social, and political stability. The Yellow River is an investigative expedition to the source of China’s contemporary water crisis, mapping the confluence of forces that have shaped the predicament that the world’s most populous nation now faces in managing its water reserves. Chinese governments have long struggled to maintain ecological stability along the Yellow River, undertaking ambitious programs of canal and dike construction to mitigate the effects of recurrent droughts and floods. But particularly during the Maoist years the North China Plain was radically re-engineered to utilize every drop of water for irrigation and hydroelectric generation. As David A. Pietz shows, Maoist water management from 1949 to 1976 cast a long shadow over the reform period, beginning in 1978. Rapid urban growth, industrial expansion, and agricultural intensification over the past three decades of China’s economic boom have been realized on a water resource base that was acutely compromised, with effects that have been more difficult and costly to overcome with each passing decade. Chronicling this complex legacy, The Yellow River provides important insight into how water challenges will affect China’s course as a twenty-first-century global power.
Water Management in the Yellow River Basin of China
Author: Charles GreerPublisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292773072
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
Throughout history the Yellow River, or Huang Ho, has repeatedly broken through its levees to rampage over the densely populated North China Plain. In spite of its importance as the major river of China, little has been written on the Yellow River and its management. Charles Greer fills this gap with his comprehensive and thoroughly researched book. This work deals with the technological problems faced by the Chinese in taming the destructive river and also focuses on cultural attitudes that have governed the Chinese response to nature. For example, water control was not highly regarded by the Taoists, who preferred to let nature take its course; but the Buddhists sought to harness the river against devastating floods and also to benefit their crops. Greer traces water use and management in the Yellow River Basin through Chinese history and discusses early Western interest in the flood problem and Soviet assistance in Yellow River development. He analyzes traditional methods of control as well as newer strategies and their implications. The author of this book is one of a small number of social scientists able to master the original Chinese-language historical materials necessary to this undertaking. He has also examined Chinese water management methods first-hand as part of a delegation of water management specialists in 1976. In addition to geographers and conservationists, China scholars will find this book valuable because of the axial role the control of the Yellow River plays in the fundamental economic health of the People’s Republic of China. Water management engineers will find much useful comparative material.
River Control and the Yellow River of China
Author: Controlling the Dragon
Author: Randall A. DodgenPublisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082486199X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
The Yellow River has long been viewed as a symbol of China's cultural and political development, its management traditionally held as a gauge of dynastic power. For centuries, the country's early rulers employed a defensive approach to the river by building dikes and diversion channels to protect fields and population centers from flooding. This situation changed dramatically after the Yuan (1260-1368) emperors constructed the Grand Canal, which linked the North China Plain and the capital at Beijing with the Yangtze Valley. One of the most ambitious imperial undertakings of any age, by the turn of the nineteenth century the water system had become a complex network of locks, spillways, and dikes stretching eight hundred kilometers from the mountains in western Henan to the Yellow Sea. Controlling the Dragon examines Yellow River engineering from two perspectives. The first looks at long-term efforts to manage the river starting in the early Ming dynasty, at the nature of the bureaucracy created to do the job, and finally focuses on two of the Confucian engineers who served successfully in the decade before the system was abandoned. In the second section, the author chronicles a series of dramatic floods in the 1840s and explores the way politics, environment, and technology interacted to undermine the state's commitment to the Yellow River control system.
Water Management in the Yellow River Basin
Author: Publisher: IWMI
ISBN: 9290905514
Category : Water resources development
Languages : en
Pages : 48
Book Description
The Ecology of War in China
Author: Micah S. MuscolinoPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107071569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
This book explores the interplay between war and the environment in Henan Province, a hotly contested frontline territory that endured massive environmental destruction and human disruption during the conflict between China and Japan that raged during World War II. In a desperate attempt to block Japan's military advance, Chinese Nationalist armies under Chiang Kai-shek broke the Yellow River's dikes in Henan in June 1938, resulting in devastating floods that persisted until after the war's end. Greater catastrophe struck Henan in 1942-1943, when famine took some two million lives and displaced millions more. Focusing on these war-induced disasters and their aftermath, this book conceptualizes the ecology of war in terms of energy flows through and between militaries, societies, and environments. Ultimately, Micah Muscolino argues that efforts to procure and exploit nature's energy in various forms shaped the choices of generals, the fates of communities, and the trajectory of environmental change in North China.
The Water Kingdom
Author: Philip BallPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022647092X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
From the Yangtze to the Yellow River, China is traversed by great waterways, which have defined its politics and ways of life for centuries. Water has been so integral to China’s culture, economy, and growth and development that it provides a window on the whole sweep of Chinese history. In The Water Kingdom, renowned writer Philip Ball opens that window to offer an epic and powerful new way of thinking about Chinese civilization. Water, Ball shows, is a key that unlocks much of Chinese culture. In The Water Kingdom, he takes us on a grand journey through China’s past and present, showing how the complexity and energy of the country and its history repeatedly come back to the challenges, opportunities, and inspiration provided by the waterways. Drawing on stories from travelers and explorers, poets and painters, bureaucrats and activists, all of whom have been influenced by an environment shaped and permeated by water, Ball explores how the ubiquitous relationship of the Chinese people to water has made it an enduring metaphor for philosophical thought and artistic expression. From the Han emperors to Mao, the ability to manage the waters ? to provide irrigation and defend against floods ? was a barometer of political legitimacy, often resulting in engineering works on a gigantic scale. It is a struggle that continues today, as the strain of economic growth on water resources may be the greatest threat to China’s future. The Water Kingdom offers an unusual and fascinating history, uncovering just how much of China’s art, politics, and outlook have been defined by the links between humanity and nature.