According to Wittfogel, most of the first civilizations in history, such as Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, Pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru, are believed to have been hydraulic empires.
[2] Most hydraulic empires existed in arid or desert regions, but imperial China also had some such characteristics, due to the exacting needs of rice cultivation.
Some scholars believe the Arthashastra makes a clear reference to canals for irrigation, in a sutra which points out that water was set in motion by digging (khatapravrittim) from a river-dam (nandinibhandayatana) or a tank.
The typical hydraulic empire government, in Wittfogel's thesis, is extremely centralized, with no trace of an independent aristocracy – in contrast to the decentralized feudalism of medieval Europe.
Needham argued that the Chinese government was not despotic, was not dominated by a priesthood, had many peasant rebellions, and that Wittfogel's perspective does not address the necessity and presence of bureaucracy in modern Western civilization.
Archeological evidence now makes it appear that in at least three of the areas that Wittfogel cites as exemplifying his "hydraulic hypothesis"—Mesopotamia, China, and Mexico—full-fledged states developed well before large-scale irrigation".
"[6][7] On China, which Carneiro called "the prototypical area for Wittfogel's hydraulic theories", he quoted Jacques Gernet who had recently written: “although the establishment of a system of regulation of water courses and irrigation, and the control of this system, may have affected the political constitution of the military states and imperial China, the fact remains that, historically, it was the pre-existing state structures and the large, well-trained labour force provided by the armies that made the great irrigation projects possible”.
[6] Of hydraulic empires generally, Carneiro commented: "This is not to say, of course, that large-scale irrigation, where it occurred, did not contribute significantly to increasing the power and scope of the state.