A lot of people in this thread seem to be missing the cultural context: the Chinese king Yu the Great is traditionally credited with building canals (mentioned in the first paragraph of the paper).
> In China, the tale of the legendary Great Yu’s heroic taming of floods and the subsequent founding of the Xia Dynasty continues to dominate mainstream scholarly narrative on the formation of China’s first state, albeit with great controversy. The importance of state-organized hydraulic projects and elites’ control of water to the evolution of Bronze Age and early imperial societies is also emphasized in recent archaeological studies of water.
Evidence that a small town of 500 (I'm guessing 100-200 households) can self organize some urban infrastructure doesn't contradict narrative of Xia state hydrology that operates on completely different scale and coordinated between different tribes. 9/10 of the archeology team were from PRC and fine making pronouncement that a few hundred people can get together and do home owner association tier stuff.
The drama over King Yu / Xia historicitiy is whether his mythos / achievements was game of telephone. Whether he exists at all and hence whether Xia should be considered as China's first dynasty where ruler successfully tamed water. Whether that comes later is matter of debate, but I don't think anyone has seriously suggested a large culture (i.e. millions of people over vast territory) can self organize huge, sprawling capita projects without centralized authority.
