In August 1992, farmers of Baishan village in Hebei province and Panyang village in Henan province fight with rudimentary explosives over control of water from the Zhang River, which feeds an irrigation canal for the two provinces. An attempt to divert the river leads to a confrontation and an attack on irrigation canals.
Civil unrest erupts over use and allocation of water from Baiyang Lake, the largest natural lake in northern China. Several people die in riots by villagers in July 2000 in Shandong after officials cut off water supplies. In August 2000, six die when officials in the southern province of Guangdong blow up a water channel to prevent a neighboring county from diverting water.
A water tank at a water purification plant is contaminated with oil and agricultural chemicals. The attack on the water supplies is in protest of the construction of an airport in Hokusol/Narita, Japan.
Tens of thousands of farmers stage a sit-in against the construction of the Pubugou dam on the Dadu River in Sichuan Province, China. Riot police are deployed to quell the unrest and one person is killed. Witnesses also report the deaths of a number of residents.
An intentional rupturing of the Wei River dams leads to the victory of Han Dynasty forces.
In 1642, in a battle between the incoming Manchu and the forces of the Ming dynasty, Yellow River (China) dikes are breached by both sides, creating a catastrophe for Kaifeng in which 300,000 of its 378,000 citizens die.
Hundreds of Uyghurs are arrested following an attack on May 20th that led to the death of seven Han Chinese workers building a dam on the Karakash River in Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture’s Karakash (Moyu) county, China. Local officials ascribe the violence to land and water disputes and cultural differences between Han immigrants [to Xinjiang] and Uyghurs.
The Huang He’s dikes are breached for military purposes. In 1642, “toward the end of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), General Gao Mingheng used the tactic near Kaifeng, China in an attempt to suppress a peasant uprising.”
Chiang Kai-shek orders the destruction of flood-control dikes of the Huayuankou, Henan section of the Huang He (Yellow) River, in order to flood areas threatened by the Japanese army. West of Kaifeng, dikes are destroyed with dynamite, spilling water across the flat plain. Even though the flood destroys part of the invading army and mires its equipment in mud, Wuhan, the headquarters of the Nationalist government is taken by the Japanese in October. Floodwaters cover an area variously estimated as…
Fergana (Yuan), the capital of China, surrenders after the enemy cuts off the city’s water supplies. “In the city of the king of Yuan there were no wells, and the people had to obtain water from a river outside the city, whereupon experts in hydraulics were sent to divert the course of the river, thus depriving the city of water, besides effecting an opening though which the city might be laid open to access. General Ir-shi wished to attack Yu-chong…