Under favourable meteorological and political conditions the human management of river systems gave rise to a thriving agricultural economy and stable society. Excessive deforestation, wetland reclamation, and the over-extension of river dyke networks transformed regular flood pulses, which were an integral feature of the fluvial ecosystem, into destructive inundations, which wrought chaos upon human communities. Having occupied alluvial and lacustrian plains, agriculturalists exacerbated the natural risk of inundation by transforming the landscape. Flooding was a perennial problem faced by those living in the Yangzi region.
The ultimate cause of the 1931 Central China Flood lay in the long-term interaction between human communities and river basins. As such, it is referred to here as the 1931 Central China Flood. Although the flood affected much of the country the core disaster zone was concentrated in eight central provinces. The Yellow River and Grand Canal also experienced major flooding, whilst there were lessor inundations from as far south as the Pearl River ( Zhu Jiang), which flows through the city of Guangzhou (Canton), to as far north as the Songhua and Yalu Rivers, which flow to the north of Korea. In Chinese this event is usually described as the Yangzi-Huai Flood ( Jiang-Huai shuizai), yet the disaster was not limited to these two rivers. In 1931 Central China experienced a devastating flood that inundated an area equivalent in size of England and half of Scotland, affected the lives of an estimated 52 million people, and killed as many as 2 million.
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