Pietz, David Allen (Author)
Harvard University Press
Physical Details: x + 367 pp.; ill.; maps
Language: English
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.
...MoreReview Yan Gao (2016) Review of "The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China". Agricultural History (pp. 130-132).
Review Elene E. Songster (April 2017) Review of "The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China". Technology and Culture (pp. 621-623).
Review Li, Lillian M. (2015) Review of "The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China". Environmental History (pp. 828-830).
Similar Citations
Book
François Jarrige;
Thomas Le Roux;
(2021)
The Contamination of the Earth: A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age
(/isis/citation/CBB416267621/)
Article
Ross, Benjamin;
Amter, Steven;
(2002)
Deregulation, Chemical Waste, and Ground Water: A 1949 Debate
(/isis/citation/CBB000200175/)
Article
Matthew P. Johnson;
(October 2019)
Black Gold of Paradise: Negotiating Oil Pollution in the US Virgin Islands, 1966–2012
(/isis/citation/CBB282414761/)
Article
Akers, Harry F.;
Porter, Suzette A. T.;
(2007)
The 1945--1955 Queensland Artesian Fluoride Experience: A Unique Phenomenon within the Australian Wool Industry
(/isis/citation/CBB000850003/)
Book
Nancy Langston;
(2017)
Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World
(/isis/citation/CBB567294913/)
Article
Catherine Carstairs;
(2015)
The Environmental Critique of Water Fluoridation
(/isis/citation/CBB164063111/)
Book
Ling Zhang;
(2016)
The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048-1128
(/isis/citation/CBB899763419/)
Book
Milazzo, Paul Charles;
(2006)
Unlikely Environmentalists: Congress and Clean Water, 1945--1972
(/isis/citation/CBB000742127/)
Book
Stippak, Marcus;
(2010)
Beharrliche Provisorien städtische Wasserversorgung und Abwasserentsorgung in Darmstadt und Dessau 1869--1989
(/isis/citation/CBB001420944/)
Thesis
Hardy, Eric M.;
(2011)
Policy Drought: Water Resource Management, Urban Growth, and Technological Solutions in Post-World War II Atlanta
(/isis/citation/CBB001567270/)
Book
Richard T. Kingsford;
(2017)
Lake Eyre Basin Rivers: Environmental, Social and Economic Importance
(/isis/citation/CBB620985266/)
Book
Allitt, Patrick;
(2014)
A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism
(/isis/citation/CBB001422331/)
Book
Markowitz, Gerald;
Rosner, David;
(2002)
Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution
(/isis/citation/CBB000301634/)
Book
Tvedt, Terje;
Chapman, Graham;
Hagen, Roar;
(2010)
Water and Geopolitics in the New World Order
(/isis/citation/CBB001033491/)
Book
Conohar Scott;
(2022)
Photography and Environmental Activism: Visualising the Struggle Against Industrial Pollution
(/isis/citation/CBB537949616/)
Book
Jundt, Thomas;
(2014)
Greening the Red, White, and Blue: The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America
(/isis/citation/CBB001422360/)
Thesis
Eardley-Pryor, Roger;
(2014)
The Global Environmental Moment: Sovereignty and American Science on Spaceship Earth, 1945--1974
(/isis/citation/CBB001567572/)
Book
Soll, David;
(2013)
Empire of Water: An Environmental and Political History of the New York City Water Supply
(/isis/citation/CBB001451966/)
Article
Wiese, Andrew;
(2013)
“The Giddy Rise of the Environmentalists”: Corporate Real Estate Development and Environmental Politics in San Diego, California, 1968--73
(/isis/citation/CBB001213632/)
Chapter
Marianna Tsionki;
(2022)
Porto Marghera: Working-class Environmentalism
(/isis/citation/CBB886773267/)
Be the first to comment!