Abstract: River Strategy is a national development strategy that takes river basins as fundamental units to coordinate goals such as water security assurance, optimized resource allocation, ecological restoration, and cultural continuity.Through a systematic review of policy documents and academic literature, the evolution of the river strategy was traced and divided into three phases: strategy incubation from 2014 to 2020, strategy proposal from 2021 to 2023, and strategy implementation from 2024 and beyond.The five core tasks of river strategy were elaborated.From a systems-based perspective grounded in the human-water relationship discipline, the necessity of applying this lens to the river strategy was demonstrated, and five key issues within the strategy were systematically identified.A research framework and specific research pathways for the river strategy were proposed, with a primary focus on five major areas: flood and waterlogging disaster prevention, construction of the national water network, rigid constraints on water resources, ecological system protection, and integrated river basin governance.The study also offers an outlook on further research directions, aiming to provide references for the further research and practical implementation of the river strategy.