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The slackening of imperial efforts in systematic improvements to the levee system leads to a major change in the course of the Huang Ho during the early years (1850-64) of the Taiping Rebellion in South and central China.

The river returns to its old course north of the Shantung Peninsula in 1852-54, removing Süchow's westward waterway link.

The Nien's activities greatly intensify, partly by the addition to their numbers of a great many starving people who have lost their livelihood from the repeated floods of the Huang Ho in the early 1850s, and partly because they have become emboldened by the Taiping advance north of the Yangtze.