In 1938, in a desperate bid to slow the Japanese advance, Chinese forces breached the Yellow River dykes at Huayuankou, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and displacing millions more. The event was politically toxic to the ruling KMT regime and taken advantage of by the CCP as recruitment propaganda.
After Japan's withdrawal, repairing the dykes became a priority, but it seems that repairs were delayed and not complete until 1947. Wikipedia has this to say:
The breach in the dam [sic] became such a major rallying point for the Communists that they actually tried to halt an attempt by the Chinese Government, with the assistance of the UN, to seal the breach. Their armed resistance ultimately failed and the dykes were rebuilt in 1946 and 1947, and the Yellow River returned to its pre-1938 course. The point was nevertheless made; the breach had in the end given the Communists a huge political boost in the North.
This implies that the Communists purposefully delayed repair efforts, up to armed resistance, because it was politically useful. This sounds very Machiavellian but not entirely out of line with the worst of what people like Mao were capable of.
In 1946 why did the CCP oppose the KMT on sealing the Huayuankou breach and restoring the Yellow River's original course?
...A CCP spokesperson stated, "We strongly oppose the KMT's hidden agenda to flood our liberated areas with this evil plan, and ask people at home and abroad to uphold justice, halt the repair of the Huayuankou breach, and completely follow the Heze Agreement.
That is, the CCP had other reasons to delay the repair:
- They wanted the breach to be sealed only after downstream dykes were fully repaired, otherwise premature sealing could result in a newer breach
- They controlled territory downstream of the original river course; restoring the course would split this area in two and weaken their control
Unfortunately a lot of the better references are behind paywalls, so I can't fairly judge the competing narratives.
Why were the dyke repairs delayed? Were there negotiations and agreements, if so when were they made, and what did they agree upon?