Chinese Destroy Yellow River Dikes to Block Japanese Advance

On June 4, 1938 at the orders of Chiang Kai-shek  Chinese engineers destroyed the Yellow River dikes near the town of Chengchow. Sources disagree whether it was primarily unsuspecting Japanese invaders or unsuspecting Chinese peasants who were washed away by the resulting flood but I suspect it was the Chinese peasants. At the time the Chinese put out the story that Japanese bombers had hit the dikes demonstrating that they did not want to claim credit for the result.

The Yellow River known as “China’s sorrow” because of its periodic natural flooding had by this time become more like a giant aqueduct than a typical river as a result of Chinese flood control measures and the steady buildup of silt as the river flowed toward the sea. In the region where the flooding occurred the riverbed was between 23 and 29 feet feet above the surrounding plain. Paradoxically the water level was low in 1938 because the spring rains were unusually light and the Chinese had to work hard to get a real flood going.

They succeeded however and the resulting flooded area, 30 miles long and 10 miles wide, temporarily halted the Japanese advance and created in its local area a line of demarcation that held up for the next six years. The flooding also came at a tremendous human cost in lives and the destruction of farms and agricultural land. However, the Chinese were once again out of options as they desperately sought time to rebuild their forces and evacuate and relocate factories necessary for the war effort. Further trading of space for time could not resume until these industrial evacuations were complete.

The use of deliberate flooding of your own territory comes at a very high price and is usually a tactic employed by the weak against the strong. I am reminded of the story of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands who just before World War I was watching a joint military review with Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and in response to a boast of the Kaiser that the soldiers of the German Guards unit marching past were all six feet tall is said to have remarked that “when we open our dikes the water is seven feet deep.” Subsequently, Dutch neutrality was respected by Germany in World War I for whatever reason.

Machiavelli was among the first and most famous to explore moral issues of national leadership. He argued that leaders of states could not allow themselves to be bound by standards of personal morality in matters of state. Although there are important matters of degree which can change the quality of their acts, it seems that all national leaders must inevitably have some blood on their hands and this is certainly true of Chiang  Kai-shek.  However, Chiang’s actions on this occasion were both effective and  driven by military necessity.

There is some speculation that the  destruction resulting from the flooding  gave  a boost to the Communist cause and  undermined Nationalist legitimacy. I don’t think we will ever know how much this was really so. A study of the period reveals plenty of other reasons the Communist cause prospered in China and the subsequent  political costs would have mattered little in 1938 with the immediate Japanese threat requiring action in the short term. Machiavelli would probably have approved of this decision even as he shook his head in dismay over many others.