Experts are dusting off old plans to divert the Yangtze which ravaged the south in the summer floods while the north was hit by a drought of the Yellow River. "Considered from a long-term point of view, diversion projects are necessary to supply water to the Yellow River," Liu Changming, an expert from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua. The idea dates back to the 1950s, when leaders were thinking of diverting the waters of the Yangtze, China's longest river, north to the Yellow, the second largest.