This system of irrigation is well known from multiple cultures in Central Asia.  It wouldn't be appropriate at all for most Chinese cultural areas, which are wet/humid enough to depend upon surface irrigation, and where the water table is much higher.  Ordinarily I would assume that you're simply mis-informed, but your comment, and the strange aggression with which you write it, fits pretty well into a long Chinese tradition of claiming control over both the territory and the history of non-Chinese peoples.