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Why did Chinese Nationalist forces break the Yellow River dikes in 1938?
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Yellow River
The Yellow River (Huang He) basin and the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) basin and their drainage networks.
In 1938, Chinese Nationalist forces under the command of Chiang Kai-shek intentionally destroyed the dikes of the Yellow River near Kaifeng and Zhengzhou.12
This action was taken as a desperate military strategy during the Second Sino-Japanese War to halt the rapid advance of invading Japanese troops. While the maneuver succeeded in disrupting the Japanese military's progress, it resulted in a catastrophic flood that caused between 500,000 and 900,000 deaths.12