Research On The Policy Of The Yellow River By Late Qing Dynasty (AD 1840-AD 1911)

The Yellow River is among China's mother rivers and meanwhile it is also a river dogged with misfortunes and mishaps. The policy of rivers has always been a major policy of the successive governments in the feudal society. The policy of rivers and setups did not become mature and self-contained until the late Qing. Faced with the situation of frequent flood outbreaks, the governments of late Qing Dynasty invested a great deal of manpower, material and financial resources trying to control the worsening situation and to some degree achieved some short-term effects on containing the happenings and damages by floods. Nevertheless, incapable policies of rivers and lacks of long-term plans and awareness of across-the-board repairing of rivers caused low efficiency of river administration and reduced the effects of providing disaster relief.The policy of rivers declined in late Qing Dynasty and in that period the frequency of floods was very high, the ranges wide and damages serious. The common people suffered a lot from one disaster after another and their poor life became even poorer.The worsening of river policy in late Qing Dynasty was caused for one thing by natural factors. What was more important was that the political systems were unreasonable at that time and besides there were many other factors such as corruption of government officials, declining national power, etc. And in reverse the worsening of river policy had great impacts on many aspects such as politics, economy and social life at that time. There is a close link between the rise and fall of a country and flourish and decline of river administration: rivers share the same destiny with the country in which they are located. Rivers get tamed in a prosperous country and ruined in a declining state, and vice versa.