 Although several thousand Japanese troops were drowned, 12 million Chinese were affected, nearly 900,000 of them dying.As the Japanese had been reported to have taken the city of Kaifeng, many of the dikes near Zhengzhou were along the path the Japanese would take if they wanted to capture the city of Wuhan.This was the triggering idea for the Nationalist troops as they pictured the Yellow River being a military tool to stop the advancement of the Japanese.