Imperial China was known for its massive water control projects, most famously the Huang (Yellow) River dykes and the Grand Canal. Today's China is now constructing the largest hydroelectric project in human history, the Three Gorges dam. Sandwiched between these two eras was Republican China, when the traditional methods of construction and engineering gave way to new processes grounded in the principles of scientific hydrology and engineering largely developed in the West. In this brief but fascinating study, David A. Pietz examines the efforts of the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek during the Nanjing decade of 1927–1937 to re-shape the Huai River basin. A student of William Kirby, Pietz adopts the Kirby view that one should see 1949 not as an unbridgeable divide between two eras, but find much continuity in the growth of the modern developmental state in China.

Pietz has chosen the Huai River basin for his case study primarily because it witnessed the Kuomintang government's largest such project. In addition, the ecology of no other area of China has been more impacted by human action. Although draining over a relatively flat alluvial plain, the Huai was far more stable in ancient times than its northern neighbor, the Huang River, because of a much lower silt content. Yet all changed in 1194 when the Huang broke through its banks and began to flow south into the Huai, radically altering the ecology of north central China. From 1194 until 1855 the Huang River entered the ocean through the old Huai River channel, rendering the Huai a mere tributary. Subsequent imperial governments attempted to contain the Huang River while at the same time stabilizing the Grand Canal, so essential for grain transport from the south.